Conference 2026: Soil Health for Profit
Havelock North Function Centre
27 – 28 May 2026
Our “Soil Health for Profit” theme in 2026 is, in some ways, a return to the past. LandWISE arose out of work to combat soil erosion through use of minimum tillage and we’re returning to strip-till in 2026. A lot has been learned in the intervening years! Along with that, we’ll look at what can be done to measure and manage crop nutrition and soil health to ensure sustainability and long-term profitability.
We have international speakers from Pennsylvania and Tasmania complementing national and local growers and experts. They will share how they set out to build profitable enterprises with a focus on soil health and an eye to wider sustainability ambitions. We’ve asked them to offer ideas of things to take home and apply or try – to feed the appetites of keen delegates.
We have talks from people applying regenerative principles in cropping, pastures and orcharding, talks on strip-till and crop-stacking, soil amendments and cover cropping, and managing and minimising the cost of nutrient programmes. As always, expect representation of agritech covering a wide range of technologies.
Conference 2025 Getting to Carbon Positive!
Once again held in Hawke’s Bay at the Havelock North Function Centre, the 2025 Conference was on Wed 21 & Thu 22 May. We focused on regenerative crop production, carbon foot-printing, and electrification. We had new technologies to think about and see, we had speakers with valuable messages, and we enjoyed catching up with old friends and new.
Do we know the footprint of our activities? How do international markets assess them and what will we need to report? We were proud to present Associate Professor Dr Pii-Tuulia Nikula to open the conversation. We’ve done the numbers on our Carbon Positive cropping treatments, and we had others talking about what they are doing to address their footprints too.
We’ll need energy, of course, but how much can we generate on-site? Is electrification realistic now? We were delighted to have Mike Casey of the Electric Cherry Orchard and CEO of Rewiring Aotearoa opening that discussion. We had robots, electric vehicles and a solar array with inverters and batteries available for perusal. We ad biostrips and insectaries and an OWL weed locator to try.
Conference 24 Rebuilding Our Soils
Our 2024 LandWISE Conference. “Rebuilding Our Soils” was held in Hawke’s Bay at the Havelock North Function Centre on Wed 15 & Thu 16 May.
An important theme was regenerative cropping; what does it mean in New Zealand, and can intensive systems be regenerative? That includes our own 6-year trial that began in late spring 2022. We also reported on work to address building soils from scratch and getting fields back into full production, given the devastation in Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne and Northland.
We had a good representation of new agritech covering a wide range of technologies.
We sincerely thank all our speakers, sponsors and supporters for their contributions.
Gisborne Workshop – Soil Recovery after Cyclone Gabrielle
Bushmere Arms, 1:30pm Tuesday 20 June
An afternoon meeting to discuss actions growers can take to help restore paddocks impacted by Cyclone Gabielle.
- What information is out there?
- Learning from the past
- Decision tree to guide management choices
- Early results from Hawke’s Bay testing
- Early results from Tairawhiti testing
- Paddock responses so far – what seems to be working?
- Where to from here?
Conference 23 Normal Practice Revisited
This conference focused on building and rebuilding our soils, topics close to recovery from the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle and “Carbon Positive”, our new regenerative process crop production project. The well-loved Tech Session had new companies presenting their technologies, ideas about responsible robotics and a panel discussion led by Brendan O’Connell from AgritechNZ. Day 2 focused on weed management, with updates from the AgResearch herbicide resistance management project and insights from two overseas experts. The afternoon field event was a chance to see things first-hand in the paddock, and for many a first opportunity to see our regen project at the MicroFarm.