LandWISE Board member Alex has changed her role and is now also our Project Manager: Sustainable Systems at LandWISE! Since starting at the beginning of October, she has been very busy establishing trials at the MicroFarm and at eight local process cropping farms.
We are delighted to have Alex on board, with her strong background in nutrient management and a focus on sustainable production systems.
The local farms are part of the second year of our “Best Management Practice of Nitrates in Process Cropping” project funded by MPI through the Sustainable Farming Fund, with co-funding and support from Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, Kraft-Heinz Watties and McCain Foods. As with everyone else, the wet spring has delayed many plantings, but we have six trials established, with two more green bean crops to be planted in January.
We began an extension to our “Future Proofing Vegetable Production” project in July. That is making a series of online learning resources, based on the lessons from the Future Proofing Vegetable Production work in Gisborne and Horowhenua. Alex stars in two new videos, which can be viewed on our new-look website.
Alex is also managing a new trial that will be announced shortly. A lot of preliminary work behind the scenes and a huge amount of baseline sampling in the field has kept everyone very busy for the last few months.