NOMINATIONS HAVE opened for this year's Rabobank Leadership awards – recognising the contribution of outstanding leaders in New Zealand and Australia's food and agribusiness industries.

THE 25th ANNIVERSARY of 2014 New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards winners will go down in history.

AN INNOVATIVE new competition for Year 10 students helping to promote careers in the primary industries has been launched by Education Minister Hekia Parata and Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy.

THE FONTERRA Milk for Schools rollout across New Zealand is complete with 1450 schools, 170,000 Kiwi kids and their families, 10,500 Fonterra farmers, and 74 Anchor milkmen involved.

THE COMMERCE Commission wants any remaining rural customers with concerns with the way that interest rate swaps were sold to them to come forward.

THEY SAY farmers are their own worst enemy and news that nearly three out of four dairy farmers have been caught breaking basic employment laws does little to dispel this notion.

RUNNING DEER alongside sheep and cattle is a challenge the managers of Anawai monitor farm are determined to surmount. 

TBFREE NEW Zealand is planning an aerial drop of 1080 this winter in Waipunga, near the Taupo-Napier highway.

There are tractors balancing bins of grapes trundling down roads criss-crossing the Martinborough Wine Village. Casual street conversations start with “how are your grapes?” and the lights are on late in wineries all over town. The 2014 harvest has begun. 

At least three people in New Zealand are eagerly awaiting the first frosts of the season, if only so they can continue trials into the development of a new frost protection machine.