LandWISE has three pilot projects being run with Te Ahikawariki, the Vegetable Industry Centre of Excellence based in Pukekohe. The projects include cover cropping, soil stability testing and use of a device to read nitrate test strips more accurately. Te Ahikawariki/VICE is a government-funded project that is setting up a cutting-edge vegetable research farm in…
Category: Agritech
STAMP Field Trip – IFAMA 2024
Last year I joined the STAMP (Strategic Thinking Agri-Food Marketing Program) for young professionals working in the agri-food sector. The program is supported by Massey University, AGMARDT and FoodHQ. We meet four times a year to connect, and through workshops, case study analysis, and discussions, we are provided with a platform to gain insights into…
European Covered Production
In this post LandWISE Project Manager Alex Dickson discusses two examples of covered horticultural production in Europe, which were explored in her recent travels to Europe. Almería – a sea of greenhouses At the bottom of Spain on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, you’ll find Almería. Almería is a city and municipality of Andalusia,…
IFAMA International Case Study Competition
Alex wins in Spain LandWISE is delighted to have supported our Project Manager Alex Dickson to be part of the 2024 IFAMA case study competition held in Almeria, Spain in June. We were even more delighted by an immediate result, as Alex posted in LinkedIn: Their group developed a proposal for a food alliance which…
Pots to Plots
Microshock Weed Control Is an Effective and Energy Efficient Option in the Field This is a summary of Dan’s work published under the AgResearch led “Herbicide Resistance Management” project, of which LandWISE was a small co-funder. The full paper was published open access in the Sustainability journal, and is freely available to everybody here> Abstract:…
Rebuilding Our Soils – Successful Conference
Many thanks to everybody involved in our 2024 Annual Conference! All up we had 99 registrants who heard from 23 amazing presenters and saw 9 different practical demonstrations. Our special thanks to everyone who contributed by sharing their knowledge and experiences, and to delegates for their active interaction. Thanks to Pure Catering and our hosts…
Rebuilding Our Soils
LandWISE 2024 – Rebuilding Our Soils Havelock North – 15-16 May 2024 We are looking forward to our annual conference this week. We will report on our current work with industry, researchers and growers seeking out and trialing best ways to rebuild soil.Our invited speakers will present alternative practices and novel ideas, some perhaps fringe,…
Alternatives for Crop Protection
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…
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…