Current research in Strip-till and No-till maize in the Waikato Rowland Tsimba is the National Research & Agronomy Manager at Genetic Technologies Limited (Pioneer®), Hamilton. An agronomist with more than 25 years’ experience, he has worked across agricultural research, the seed industry, and on-farm extension in New Zealand. Rowland leads Pioneer’s national field research programmes,…
Category: regenerative agriculture
Soil Health for Profit – Uttam Floray
Do all nitrogen amendments have the same footprint? Uttam Floray works at the intersection of climate science, primary industry, and real-world delivery. With a background in the wine sector across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, he has led production, compliance, and commercial operations while embedding environmental performance into the core of the business….
Soil Health for Profit – Richard Pentreath
Should soil health be our #1 sustainability goal? Richard has more than 25 years’ experience across orchard management, industry extension, consulting, and governance in New Zealand’s horticulture sector. He completed an eight-year tenure as Regional Manager for Ngāi Tukairangi Trust in Hawke’s Bay, leading high value kiwifruit and pipfruit orchards through significant productivity and profitability…
Soil Health for Profit – Simon White
Minimising cultivation impacts in broadacre cropping Simon White is a farmer and entrepreneur based in Otane, Hawke’s Bay. He and his wife, Lou, have built a diverse operation with soil health at its core. They have a mix of arable cropping and sheep and beef finishing across 1100 hectares which has been in their family…
2026 Winter cover crops emerged
The winter cover crops in the Carbon Positive trial plots are well underway now. The last dull, wet, cold week slowed them down a little, but they still made good progress. The preparation and planting was covered in an earlier post that you can see here> To the left of the central irrigator strip, the…
Soil Health for Profit
LandWISE Conference 2026 Havelock North Function Centre27 – 28 May 2026 Our “Soil Health for Profit” theme in 2026 is, in some ways, a return to the past. LandWISE arose out of work to combat soil erosion through use of minimum tillage and we’re returning to strip-till in 2026. A lot has been learned in…
Winter Cover Crops
After the 2025-2026 butternut crop was harvested, the Regenerative treatment received Omya Calciprills (150 kg/ha), Sulphur (30 kg/ha), Boron (10 kg/ha), and Humates (5 kg/ha). This mix has been applied annually to stimulate soil microbes for good soil health. Thanks to Websters Hydrated Lime for supplying the micronutrients again. All three treatments were then disced…
Butternut Harvest Data
Heniz-Wattie’s was unable to process our butternut through the factory due to a lack of demand, so we had to find an alternative outlet. A local grower ended up harvesting the butternuts on the 13th of March, which was a month earlier than our target harvest date with Heniz- Wattie’s. Our butternut hand harvest of…
A Lighter Touch Biodiversity Field Walk
If you’re a grower or someone interested in biodiversity planting to support pest management, we’re hosting one of the A Lighter Touch (New Zealand) Biodiversity Grower Group Field Walks at the LandWISE MicroFarm on the 19th of March from 10-12 pm. We’ll look at our bio-strips which are made up of different mixes, were planted…
Butternut Harvest
Our butternut hand harvesting to collect research data was completed on the 9th and 10th of March. Our hand harvest samples were taken from 3 m × 2 m areas within each of the four subplots of each plot; 16 per treatment, 48 in all. All butternuts within the sample area were cut from the…