Presentations at the LandWISE Conference “Rebuilding Our Soils” In the summer of 2023-2024, the LandWISE MicroFarm grew process tomatoes for Heinz-Wattie’s using three alternative management systems: conventional, regenerative, and a hybrid taking from each. One of the principles for a regenerative system is to build natural resilience rather than rely only on a chemical-based crop…
Category: Agritech
Focus on Agritech
Examples and discussions for horticulture and cropping Sustainable production through technology has been one of the key themes through the history of LandWISE Inc. We started with minimum tillage and strip tillage equipment, then rapidly adopted RTK GPS and autosteer, which we saw unlocked many opportunities for financial and environmental gains. We’ve looked a precision…
January 2024 Tomato Update
The Carbon Positive tomato crop has now been growing for 13 weeks. Our estimated harvest date is the 5th March, so just under six weeks remaining until harvest. All treatments have had a good fruit set and are reasonably disease free (minus a small amount of bacterial speck). We are on track for a good…
Olivia, our 2023-2024 Summer Intern
We are delighted to have Olivia Webster working with us as our Callaghan Innovation Summer Intern for 2023-2024. The Callaghan Innovation internship is intended to enable students to experience research and development in a workplace, so we have her engaged in our Carbon Positive regenerative cropping trials and helping out with some weed electrocution research….
Roller Crimper Demonstration
We were invited to attend an impromptu field walk at Villa Maria looking at a Braun Roller Crimper (ActiRoll) in action, hosted by Cam at Villa Maria and Dave Forward from TRS. Alex and Olivia were able to attend and brought back news and pictures. In the vineyard every twelve rows a planted strip of…
Robots and shocks
Emerging non-herbicide weed control options for vegetable and arable cropping This is the first post with details of Dan’s research into ultralow energy weeding using pulsed micro-shocks. It is an introduction by way of a comprehensive literature review, that was published in the New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research as part of the AgResearch lead…
Ultralow energy electric weeding
Micro electric shocks control broadleaved and grass weeds This is the second post with details of Dan’s electric weeding research. It is a bit “sciencey” because it is a formal research paper, but there is interesting information in it! The research was published in the Journal of Agronomy and is published Open Access, so anyone can download…
The Electric Spatula
Killing weeds with pulsed microshocks from a flat plate electrode This is the third post with details of Dan’s research into electric weeding undertakenas part of the AgResearch lead Herbicide Resistance management project. In this work, he was looking at easy ways to apply very small electric shocks to weeds, without having to carefully place…
LandWISE 23: Normal Practice Revisited
Following our successful annual conference in May, we wish to thank all the speakers and sponsors who supported us, and the delegates who enriched proceedings and made it an enjoyable event. The conference focused on building and rebuilding our soils, topics close to recovery from the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle and “Carbon Positive”, our new…
LandWISE 2023: Field Sessions
What will you see at the field Horizons, session? See a prototype electric version of the proven Oxin vineyard robot (have a drive!), Ross-AI bio-degradable netting clips, Croptide plant water status sensor (and the app), watch the Mulch-Tec transplanter working, watch the soil spader for sediment mixing at work, check out the Einboeck air-seeder for…