Until the 1980s, the low-alcohol German wine Muller Thurgau was popular internationally and in New Zealand, though wine experts maligned the Riesling-Madeleine Royale varietal as “bland”.

Phylloxera. The very word strikes fear into the heart of grape growers and winemakers everywhere from Bordeaux to Central Otago, where emaciated vines, yellowing leaves and declining productivity are of growing concern to those with phylloxera.

Recently I had a winemaker friend ring to discuss this year as being a good candidate for ATA and asked if there was much we could test for to predict this.

Milk payout will improve next season, but cashflow will remain tight on farms, say market analysts.

Worksafe NZ's prosecution of Work and Income New Zealand over last year’s Ashburton shootings holds worrying implications for New Zealand farmers, says the Federated Farmers board member responsible for health and safety, Katie Milne.

Farmers are among the fastest business people seeing the advantages of UAV technology, says Warren Eade of GeoSystems NZ. (UAV stands for unmanned aerial vehicle, or ‘drone’).

Many pests in New Zealand continue to be managed with poor understanding of their bionomics and impacts, warns the abstract of a paper published this month in the Journal of the Royal Society.

Farmers and farming organisations had better focus their energy on keeping safe on their farms, rather than getting into debates on whether children should be banned from riding as passengers on quads.

Farmers and Horizons Regional Council were for years at each other’s throats over the infamous One Plan and the council’s stance seen by some as anti-farming.

Pig kill for the last financial year was 12,000 less than budgeted for by NZPork, showing the continuing consolidation in the industry.