We were delighted to host a visit by members of the McCain Foods global team involved in their regenerative agriculture work. The team was interested to discuss the Carbon Positive project setup, challenges along the way, and lessons to date. They expressed appreciation of the way the project had been established with plots sized to…
Category: soil health
Carbon Positive Field Walk this Thursday, 9 November
Through spring and summer, we’re holding monthly Carbon Positive field walks at the MicroFarm. The November walk is on Thursday 9th, starting at 1pm and includes both indoor and outdoor elements. Its main purpose is to allow people to see the tomato crops in each of our treatments now they have been planted, but we’ll…
Carbon Positive Summer Crop 2023-24
Heinz-Watties’ tomatoes are planted Alex had a busy winter and spring, getting the operations programme for the 2023-2024 tomato crop developed in conjunction with Heinz-Watties, McCain Foods, regenerative consultants and advisors, interested local growers, organic vegetable producers, international process tomato growers, technical field representatives and contractors. We particularly note the large inputs of Caleb Burbury…
Carbon Positive Winter 2023
Results from monitoring Cover crop growth As seen in the boxplot chart above, the canopy cover (percentage of the ground covered by the cover crops in each treatment) varied with the conventional annual ryegrass planted into cultivated soil getting most cover earliest, and the regenerative oats/vetch and lupin mix direct-drilled into uncultivated soil starting slowest….
Soil Recovery after Cyclone Gabrielle
Gisborne Workshop Bushmere Arms, 1:30pm Tuesday 20 June We welcome growers and other interested people to an afternoon meeting to discuss actions growers can take to help restore paddocks impacted by Cyclone Gabielle. This meeting is open to all growers; pasture, fruit and vine crops as well as vegetable and arable crops. Please register –…
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…
LandWISE 2023: Normal Practice Revisited
Havelock North Function Centre 24-25 May 2023 It has been two years since we gathered for the last LandWISE Conference. We were unsure in 2022 what Covid was doing and chose to not add to its possible spread. With that more controlled if not fully behind us, we were feeling hopeful of a return to…
LandWISE 2023 Speakers – Soil Health
Allan Machakaire Regenerative Cropping – McCain FoodsAllan 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…
LandWISE 2023 Speakers – Starting afresh
Responding to Cyclone Gabrielle Industry Perpectives Our group of four Hawke’s Bay industry representatives will discuss the impacts on the vegetables and fruit sectors and the various ways people have responded. How did people react, what were the urgent priorities, and how are people trying to remediate impacted sites? Far too soon to look back…