We were delighted to host a visit by members of the McCain Foods global team involved in their regenerative agriculture work. The team was interested to discuss the Carbon Positive project setup, challenges along the way, and lessons to date. They expressed appreciation of the way the project had been established with plots sized to reflect real cropping situations and replication for statistical strength. Their impression was a project generating useful insights about growing systems for cropping farmers.
McCain Foods has a global strategy for implementing regenerative growing practices and the Carbon Positive project, now in its second year of crop rotation having successfully harvested a sweetcorn crop for McCain Foods last summer, is viewed as important work comparing conventional with regenerative and our “hybrid” systems.
The McCain Foods Global Ag Sustainability team visit to meet the Carbon Positive Project team at the LandWISE MicroFarm. Rod McLaren – Ag Director Australasia, Yves Leclerc – Director of Agronomy, North America, Timothée Murillo Kockmann – Global Director Smart & Sustainable Farming, France and Allan Machakaire, Agriculture Manager – Vegetables, New Zealand, Phil Schofield – chair and David France – Project Manager of HB Future Farming Trust, meeting with Alex Dickson and Dan Bloomer from LandWISE. (David France images)
People interested in the McCain Foods journey in regenerative practice can hear more on the Hot Potato podcasts. The Hot Potato Podcast | Podcast on Spotify. The Hot Potato series is a very interesting collection of discussions with influential people in the food industry. It is worth taking the time to listen if you want to understand how global businesses view sustainability and the concepts of regenerative agriculture, or in our case, regenerative cropping.
We are holding open walks at the beginning of each month. The December walk will be held on Wednesday 6th at 1 PM. The current crop is process tomatoes being grown for and in collaboration with Heinz-Watties. Plants are now well established, and different treatments are showing different growth patterns.
