LandWISE 2023 Speakers – Soil Health

Regenerative Cropping – McCain Foods
Allan Machakaire is McCain Foods Agriculture Manager based in Hastings. He has been involved in the cropping sector for two decades, involved in growing crops, canning, dehydration and frozen products. Alan has a PhD in agronomy and has published research on photosynthesis and water use efficiency, crop coefficients and on forecasting yield and tuber size of potatoes. He has been with McCain Foods for 13 years.

Allan’s presentation will outline the McCain Foods’ programme for regenerative agriculture, and McCain’s commitment to invest in our understanding of regenerative agricultural practices, costs, and benefits at our own “Farms of the Future” and those of partner organisations.

Lizzy Wicken is Fruit Agronomist for Kraft-Heinz at Watties in Hastings, taking care of the permanent fruit crops. Born and bred in Hawke’s Bay on an apple orchard, fruit growing is in her blood and is her passion. Lizzy has worked in various roles from on orchard activities to compliance and auditing to technical services and consultancy. She has a Bachelor of AgriScience and has completed her Advanced Sustainable Nutrient Management Course.

Lizzy will present the Kraft-Heinz perspective on regenerative agriculture and why it is seen as an essential component for the food sector from soil to kitchen.

Regenerative vegetable production
Dr Stuart Davis is a former Director of Vegetables NZ and former Chair of the Vegetable Research & Innovation Board. He has had a long involvement in vegetable industry research programmes particularly relating to integrated pest and disease management. Stuart is currently Sustainability Manager for LeaderBrand Produce and is based in Bombay.
Stuart will introduce a project led by LeaderBrand Produce, Countdown and Plant & Food Research, which is the first industry-wide collaboration to investigate the impacts of regenerative farming practices in fresh vegetable farming, particularly in relation to productivity, profitability, people and environment.

Carbon Positive – regenerative vs conventional cropping
Alex is Project Manager: Sustainable Systems at LandWISE. She will introduce Carbon Positive, which is a new LandWISE project run as a partnership with the Hawke’s Bay Future Farming Trust. The project is comparing conventional crop systems with a regenerative approach, and with a hybrid taking aspects of each.
To assess effects of the different farm systems, the six-year project has a comprehensive science programme, monitoring soil carbon stocks, labile carbon, nutrients, soil health, crop development, yields and financial gross margins.
Alexwill report on the first results following baseline testing, the harvest of process sweetcorn for McCain Foods, and establishment of winter cover crops in preparation for tomatoes for Heinz-Watties.

Soil Health Indicators
Dan Bloomer is the manager of LandWISE and a consultant in areas including soil health, irrigation, drainage, precision farming and agritechnology. Having been at the heart of LandWISE since its inception, he is well experienced in the area of on-farm trials and assessing soil health.

Dan will describe the suite on soil health indicators that are being measured as part of the Carbon positive project, highlighting three identified by the Soil Health Institute as being of particular significance.

Environmental DNA – indicators of soil function
Syrie is a lecturer and researcher in environmental microbiology at AUT. She has studied the biogeography of soil bacterial communities across Aotearoa New Zealand and is now investigating soil microbial communities as indicators of agroecosystem benefits associated with regenerative agriculture.

Biological communities in the soil, especially micro-invertebrates and microorganisms, are crucial members of the soil ecosystem, underpinning the productivity and sustainability of our agricultural land. Syrie asks, “How can we take advantage of this close association to monitor the impact our land use has on the functioning of soil ecosystems?”

Heavy-mulch vegetable growing systems
Fertile soil with high yield security, environmental resilience, evaporation and erosion protection, and a significant increase in soil life are strong arguments for rethinking our approach to vegetable cropping. How can the key factors ‘permanent root penetration and soil cover’ become part of a functional cropping system?
Tobi is a project consultant at live2give Organic Farm in Palmerston North. In 2002 he started with live2give Germany, a not-for-profit organisation for health-related research and education. During his time there, he periodically supported CERES-Cert as an organic certification auditor. Pioneering implementation of mulch systems in vegetable cropping, live2give began distributing a specialised mulch transplanter in 2020 after ten years of development. Tobi is currently trialing the planter in NZ conditions.