A farm apprenticeship course now a year old is starting to have an influence on getting more Kiwis in jobs on dairy farms.
Tirau farm apprentice Kadience Ruakere-Forbes is among the first year's intake under the Federated Farmers' Apprenticeship Dairy Programme, a pilot programme supported by PrimaryITO, the federation and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. . .
The valuable core database of the New Zealand dairy industry is subject to a regulatory review by the Ministry for Primary Industries, to which organisations and people can make submissions.
Consultation will run for six weeks until November 12 and any submission becomes public information, MPI said.
The key issue is whether the regulated dataset remains well aligned with the dairy industry's current and future animal evaluation needs. MPI said there has been some concern expressed among dairy genetics companies about the management of herd improvement data. . .
Grass grub and porina are causing $2.3 billion of damage to New Zealand pastures annually, according to an AgResearch study.
Of the total estimated annual losses in average years, up to $1.4b occurs on dairy farms and up to $900m on sheep and beef farms.
But scientist Colin Ferguson says this figure relates only to the damage to pasture and doesn't include the cost of replacing the pasture, destocking and restocking and the long lasting damage to affected pasture. . .
Leave her for a bit.
Get her on the ground.
The problems that can be solved with quiet cattle, rope and a little stock sense.
A five year, $11 million research project has begun, aimed at producing new high value milk products.
Led by Professor Warren McNabb, of the Riddet Institute, Palmerston North, the project will seek better mechanistic understanding of the various milks produced in New Zealand including cow, goat, sheep and deer.
A particular aim will be to develop new products for babies, very young children and elderly people in New Zealand and, especially, for export. . .
Athenberry Holdings Ltd grows Kiwifruit near Katikati. Zespri buy the fruit, brand, market and sell the fruit. Zespri engaged Agfirst to sample and test maturity and quality of fruit.
Agfirst use a local packhouse Hume to collect the samples. AgFirst's sample collector died during the collection of fruit when her quad bike overturned on rough ground next to Athenberry's kiwifruit block.
She was employed by AgFirst who had contracted a local packhouse – Hume Pack-N-Cool Ltd (Hume). It appears the rider had taken the quad bike over steep and rough terrain away from the area where she was required to collect samples.
Her training and industry practices are that you stick to the offical and mown access paths. No-one was sure why she deviated. . .
For Pete Zimmerman, a Minnesota farmer, the age of gene-edited foods has arrived. While he couldn't be happier, the soybeans he's now harvesting are at the crux of a long-running debate about a "Frankenfood" future.
Zimmerman is among farmers in several states now harvesting 16,000 acres of DNA-altered soybeans destined to be used in salad dressings, granola bars and fry oil, and sold to consumers early next year. It's the first commercialized crop created with a technique some say could revolutionize agriculture, and others fear could carry as-yet-unknown peril.
In March, the top U.S. regulator said no new rules or labeling are needed for gene-edited plants since foreign DNA isn't being inserted, the way traditional genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are made. Instead, enzymes that act like scissors are used to tweak a plant's genetic operating system to stop it from producing bad stuff — in this case, polyunsaturated fats — or enhance good stuff that's already there. . .