Ōpōtiki grower wins 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award
Brett Wotton, an Eastern Bay of Plenty kiwifruit grower and harvest contractor, has won the 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award for his work to support lifting fruit quality across the industry.
Beware the the ‘bok choy effect’.
That warning came from KPMG’s global head of agri, Ian Proudfoot, at the recent Zespri conference in Tauranga.
Proudfoot says the ‘bok choy effect’ is a way of explaining some changes taking place in markets in Asia.
What is changing more is our diet in the west and we as food producers need to recognise and understand this, Proudfoot says. A good example of the ‘bok choy effect’ is seen in Melbourne where a friend of his lives in a Vietnamese suburb.
“Twenty years ago when Zespri was founded he would have been able to go to his supermarket and buy [only] meat and three veg. Today he goes there and buys 30 or 40 different kinds of Chinese greens and a whole range of other ‘inspirational’ products. He says his diet is far better.”
Proudfoot says evolution is coming to the food sector and people are looking at a whole range of future alternatives in the future –possibly even laboratory-created food.
While NZ produces enough food to feed 40 million people, it should look to feed 800 million, he says. This would be possible if our food products became a smaller but high value addition to people’s diets.
OPINION: For close to eight years now, I have found myself talking about methane quite a lot.
The Royal A&P Show of New Zealand, hosted by the Canterbury A&P Association, is back next month, bigger and better after the uncertainty of last year.
Claims that farmers are polluters of waterways and aquifers and 'don't care' still ring out from environmental groups and individuals. The phrase 'dirty dairying' continues to surface from time to time. But as reporter Peter Burke points out, quite the opposite is the case. He says, quietly and behind the scenes, farmers are embracing new ideas and technologies to make their farms sustainable, resilient, environmentally friendly and profitable.
Relationships are key to opening new trading opportunities and dealing with some of the rules that countries impose that impede the free flow of trade.
Dawn Meats chief executive Niall Browne says their joint venture with Alliance Group will create “a dynamic industry competitor”.
Tributes have flowed following the death of former Prime Minister and political and business leader, Jim Bolger. He was 90.
OPINION: Media luvvies at Stuff, the Spinoff and the Granny Herald are spending more time than ever navel-gazing about why…
OPINION: Why does it take Treasury so long to turn around its figures on how the economy is tracking?