LandWISE 2025 Getting to Carbon Positive

Doing what we can to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions is not about meeting regulations, it is about meeting the expectations of our markets and others in our supply chains (and ourselves and the planet!). Most large companies must report on their own emissions and those of their suppliers and clients. We are part of their emissions profiles, and they want us to do our part.

What is it all about? What emissions are we talking about? Who is implementing changes to lower their impact? How do we start?

At LandWISE 2025: Getting to Carbon Positive, you’ll get these answers and more. You’ll hear and see examples, and hear that people are reaping benefits, because it isn’t all about adding costs, it can save money. And in another session, you’ll hear how it can even provide an alternative income stream.

The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol applies the measurement of emissions across three scopes. These are Scope 1, which includes the direct emissions from sources that the organisation owns or controls, such as fuel use for farm-owned vehicles, natural gas used for heating buildings and greenhouses, fertilizer use, leaks in refrigeration and cooling processes, as well as emissions from soil management. Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from purchased energy. Scope 3 includes all other indirect emissions in the organisation’s value chain, such as emissions from freight/transportation of products, business travel, waste, and emissions from purchased goods and services.

Pii-Tuulia Nikula (PhD)

Greenhouse Gas Accounting: Scopes Solutions Target Setting

Pii-Tuulia Nikula is an Associate Professor in the School of Business at the Eastern Institute of Technology (Hawke’s Bay), where she teaches courses on Sustainable Organisations and Research Methods. Her research has explored emission trajectories and climate disclosures of New Zealand businesses. Pii-Tuulia will cover key questions that apply to the application of the GHG Protocol, such as common issues and challenges with data collection and practical solutions available for emissions reduction across all three scopes. Finally, she will discuss how organisations can use their emissions baseline to start thinking about their emissions reduction targets. 

Uttam Singh Floray

Reporting for primary producers, processors and exporters

Uttam Singh Floray is a seasoned Sustainability Consultant with extensive expertise in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks, carbon accounting, and compliance solutions. As Team Lead – Account management (Government) at Toitū Envirocare, he has headed the implementation of the Carbon Neutral Government Programme and guided organisations toward achieving emissions compliance and sustainable development goals. Uttam has a lead role with Electrify Hawke’s Bay, a regional Rewiring Aotearoa group promoting adoption of low carbon alternative energy sources.

Ron McFetridge

Minimising emissions at WaterForce

One of three founders, Ron McFetridge is the Managing Director at WaterForce. Established in 2002, WaterForce has operations throughout New Zealand, with a large concentration on the South Island, and about 250 staff. Ron is working to reduce the emissions footprint of the company through careful management of energy including establishing rooftop solar and electrifying the vehicle fleet. He is speaking about the process, seeking suitable equipment and changing culture in an organisation.

Dan Bloomer (PhD)

Carbon Positive progress – relative footprints

Dan Bloomer is the LandWISE Manager and an independent consultant. He brings a diverse set of interests and extensive experience in field trials and extension to his role overseeing the LandWISE research portfolio. Together with Olivia Webster, he will present a study comparing the emissions from the three farm systems that form the Carbon Positive trial. What are the main drivers of emissions in an intensive process cropping scenraio?

Of course, knowing our emissions is only a starting point. We also want to know how we can minimise them. And that is the subject of the Electrification and Alternative energy case studies sessions!

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Why are we dedicating half a day to electrification at LandWISE 2025?

Part of the answer, of course, is in the conference title – “Getting to Carbon Positive”. If we want to get our emissions to zero, we need to stop using fossil fuels. But that is only part of it as Uttam Singh Floray, Community Lead at Electrify Hawke’s Bay will explain.

Solar electricity is now the cheapest form of energy and it is getting cheaper. The cost to generate a kWh ranges from about 4c from a farm-scale system to perhaps 12c for a home system. If you generate it on-site, there are virtually no transmission losses. If you have excess, you can store some to use when the sun isn’t shining. Or you can sell it and have another income stream. Or both. The price you get depends on the agreement you reach and possibly on spot-prices.

In “Unlocking the potential of farm solar and storage”, Rewiring Aotearoa reports that a Federated Farmers’ survey of 1,000 farmers showed that 70% of respondents would consider installing solar panels and the enthusiasm was evenly spread across different age groups, genders and farm types. Going electric is a clear win on the numbers, both at home and on the farm, but it can be complicated in practice. Our keynote speaker, Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey from Forest Lodge Orchard, is well versed in all this.

Lincoln University is establishing an electric research farm, a 1.5 MW solar installation that will comprise around 2800 photovoltaic (PV) panels, generating about 2.3 GWh of renewable energy per year. This will be described by Pieter-Willem Hendriks.

Another farmer with personal experience they are willing to share is Becks Smith. With her farm already set up, she now engaged in “Farmers supporting energy solutions on farm”.

One of the main issues facing those wanting to install solar at present is navigating the legal processes and regulatory requirements. Hopefully this will be quickly simplified, but electrical, building, resource management and utility requirements must all be met. Another is sizing the optimum system and allowing for future needs. We will use the MicroFarm solar system as a case study with Freenergy’s Aaron Duncan leading us through the various options modelled for economic optimisation, and the process of ticking boxes so our excess can be exported.

As someone who has driven a fully electric car for well over two years, I’m well aware of the questions I get most frequently. They are about range (I can get over 500km on a charge, weather and terrain depending), charging times (technically 350 km in 18 minutes on a fast charger or 50 km/h at home), cost of electricity (~12c/km on the most expensive charger, 0c/km at home), towing ability (my car has an 1,800 kg braked rating), and do I like it (YES!)

In Cyclone Gabrielle we plugged key home essentials – fridge, internet, electric jug – into extension cords from the car’s 230V vehicle to load (V2L) plugs. After about four days we had barely dropped the battery reserve.

Is it a 4WD ute suitable for hard farm work? (No)

But there are electric and hybrid ute options now. Some, like my car, have built-in 230V power outlets, very handy for using power tools a long way from home.

It might be a while before all farm machinery has electric options. In the meantime, it is possible to transplant an electric motor and power-pack into internal combustion engine (ICE) machines. You can see an example master-minded for Mountain Bike Rotorua by Ra Cleave from Ripple Tech. And because it isn’t just solar that enables on-farm electricity generation, Boyn Benton will outline some of the micro-hydro options available too.

We are setting up some physical displays at the Horizons Regional Council Field Session, so come along and learn about options for farm or home, car or machine, and whether electricity could be another income stream. And cut costs, emissions and your footprint at the same time.

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LandWISE Events

LandWISE AGM

2:30 pm 21st May at Havelock North Function Centre

LandWISE 2025: Getting to Carbon Positive

21-22 May at Havelock North Function Centre

Other’s Events

 2025 Summerfruit NZ Conference

25-26 June, Marlborough Events Centre

FAR Conference Show me the money

30 June-1 July Lincoln University

NZAPI EXPO 2025 – New Zealand Apples & Pears

30 July – 1 August – Nelson

2025 NZPPS Symposium – “Resistance Management – Today’s Tools for Tomorrow”

11 August, Christchurch

NZPPS Conference 2025

12-14 August, Christchurch

Potatoes NZ Conference

12-13 August 2025, Christchurch

New Zealand Horticulture Conferences 2025

26-27 August, Wellington

NZARM 2025 Changing Landscapes

11 – 13 November – Blenheim Marlborough

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Going to the Vegetables Big Day Out in Pukekohe was an amazing opportunity for me to meet people and to learn more about the research and innovation taking place in the vegetable industry.

Being able to see the biodiversity strips, native plant pods (insectaries), and cover crops that are a part of “A Lighter Touch”, then hearing about the differences they are seeing with all three working together was a highlight for me. LandWISE also has native insectaries and has planted biodiversity strips alongside our annual cover crops. It was interesting to hear Howe (Balle Brothers’ crop manager) talk about how he expected they would have to spray an insecticide due to an increased number of aphids. However, they left it for two weeks, and the aphid numbers dropped as the beneficial insects controlled the aphid population without the need for insecticides.

Water quality was a major topic of conversation in many courses I did at university. Therefore, it was very interesting to hear about the cultural indicator tool for water quality monitoring. It is used in evaluating the current state of waterways, as well as determining actions needed to improve the water quality. For me this talk also reinforced how important it is for Mātauranga Māori and science to be integrated.

I also enjoyed listening to the career session for students. It was interesting to hear how everyone ended up in horticulture and why they enjoy it. I particularly liked hearing about the experiences and successes of other young women in the industry.

Thank you, Vegetable Industry Centre of Excellence (VICE), for hosting the Vegetables Big Day Out. It was great to be able to attend such an insightful and interactive event. I would also like to say thank you for giving me a VICE internship, as part of which I will be doing Slakes aggregate stability testing and nitrate testing with a Nitrachek device.

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Earlier this year we learnt of an interesting project focusing on increasing biodiversity on vegetable farms. The aim of this joint project between A Lighter Touch, Vegetables NZ and Onions NZ is to reduce pest insects in crops by increasing the abundance of beneficial insects on vegetable farms, therefore reducing the need for insecticides.

Two suggested approaches for increasing biodiversity caught our attention. Over the last six months, we have been exploring their implementation at the MicroFarm. We are enormously grateful to Olivia Prouse for supporting our biodiversity journey so far. We are also grateful to Richard Mills from Summerfruit NZ for leading the way in Hawke’s Bay, and showing us the importance of just giving something a go! We also extend our gratitude to other growers engaging in this initiative, who have been sharing their experiences.

Mobile Insectaries

Mobile insectaries (moveable pods) aim to provide a source of shelter, nectar, alternative hosts and pollen (SNAP) for beneficial insects. The concentrated areas of SNAP support natural enemies, which can aid in pest control in vegetable crops. The moveable pods can be moved in and out of crops easily during the year.

Following the detailed ‘how to’ guide provided by ALT, with additional support from Olivia Prouse for plant selection, we built four moveable pods. Each pod has native five plants, all selected to flower at different times of the year. The species selected were mainly plants that had small flowers to provide habitat to small predatory wasps and other small insects which cannot feed on large flowers like commonly grown manuka.

We have been monitoring the pods to see what is flowering each month. While there is some maintenance required for weeding and watering, all plants survived the winter and are thriving this spring. We are excited to have species like Pimelea mimosa, which is a native daphne, naturally found only on Te Mata peak, and to have two species of Muehlenbeckia, which provides a food source for NZ native copper butterfly.

Annual Flower Strips

The aim adding annual flowering strips to a farm is to enhance above ground diversity. Again, this increases the diversity of natural pest insect enemies, providing additional pest control.

At the MicroFarm, we had two specific areas that made for good candidates for annual planting strips. The first is along our driveway, an area which is normally sprayed year-round for weeds. The second is under the irrigator guide cable, another area that gets sprayed, particularly in the spring and summer when the irrigator is running.

Using the ‘how to’ guide from ALT, we have planted a variety of annual flowers in these areas to see what might be suitable. In late September, we planted nine 10 m long plots of annual flowers, each with different combinations of species planted. The rest will planted by early December. We have been monitoring what is growing and what is flowering, and are excited to see insects present and a range of different colored flowers along the driveway.

What’s next?

We continue to monitor the moveable pods and annual flowering strips. We hope that our late plantings will persist through the summer and autumn. While not formally part of our main Carbon Positive project, it is a nice supplementary demonstration. We hope to showcase the ALT guides and provide some regional information about what may be suitable to grow (annuals and perennials) here in Hawke’s Bay. Read more about our journey in the latest A Lighter Touch newsletter here!

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Hill Laboratories announced a new commercially available soil test for earthworm eDNA this year. The new quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) test quantifies the amount of earthworm eDNA for the New Zealand’s most common earthworm species, Aporrectodea caliginosa.

The current approach to assessing earthworms is through field visual assessments, which can be labour intensive and requires expert knowledge in identifying species. The new test provides a convenient and efficient alternative for earthworm testing.

The soil test has been calibrated for 7.5 cm soil depth in pastoral settings, rather than the 15 cm depth which is the standard depth for horticultural and arable soil tests.

We have been working with Dr Nicole Schon at AgResearch, who helped to develop the test, and Hill Laboratories to better understand how the test might be relevant within a cropping context.

This month, we completed our six-monthly Visual Soil Assessments in the Carbon Positive plots. As part of this process we sent all earthworms found to Nicole for identification, and soil samples to Hills to test for A. caliginosa eDNA. We hope that these samples will help to strengthen the understanding of the soil test taken to 15 cm depth.

Check out Alex and Nicole’s article in the latest NZ Grower magazine (pg. 48-50) for more discussion, or the Hills technical note for more details.

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As they say, spring has sprung here at the MicroFarm. It has been a busy start to the 2024-2025 cropping season. With the help of McCain Foods and Mike Kettle Contracting our early peas were planted on the 3rd of September, six days after our target date.

Pea Planting

The Conventional treatment, which was planted in annual ryegrass, was sprayed out one month ahead of planting, then ploughed, disced (x2) and power harrowed in preparation for planting peas. The Hybrid treatment, which was planted in a diverse mix of mainly black oats, tillage radish and vetch, was sprayed out one month ahead of planting, with the intention of letting the cover crop rot down and peas were direct drilled. The Regenerative treatment was not be planted in peas, and instead left in a restorative phase for an extended period, whereby some of the intensity is reduced from this system.

We ran into some roadblocks in the Hybrid. As the consequence of spraying out early was that there was no evapotranspiration from the crop, so the soil was slow to dry after rain. We didn’t want to cultivate this treatment, therefore didn’t have the option to speed up drying through ‘opening’ the soil. In our ‘dry runs’ with the planter, a distinct slot was created, which would mean the soil to seed contact would not be good. It would also create a nice little home for slugs. To keep with our production plan, we delayed our planting date to get a bit more drying time, so the soil was dry enough for some tilth to be created.

Additional seed treatment

The Hybrid seed was treated with Trichoderma, based on promising trial results from Wattie’s in Canterbury. This was added to the seed, on top of the standard McCain seed treatment. The Hybrid was drilled through the standing sprayed out cover crop, so the residue was anchored, and then mulched after planting. The main concern with leaving the cover crop standing is that some of the tillage radishes had popped out of the ground. If left standing, they could be picked up by the harvester and end up at the factory.

Pūkeko as far as the eye can see

In the days after the peas started to emerge, we found the treatments overrun with pest animals – pūkeko, rabbits, sparrows and pigeons. This is perhaps to be expected, however as each plot is only 0.1ha, every plant is precious! We actively managed these pests to minimise the damage. As a result, we have seen a few more hawks around, which is hopefully deterring some of the unwanted bird life.

Soil Temperature

Soil temperature in the planting line was recorded every 15 minutes for three weeks from planting. using iButton microloggers. Soil temperature in the Conventional treatment (cultivated/bare soil) was consistently higher than the Hybrid (direct drilled/mulched).

Pea emergence

Plant emergence has been monitored since the 24th of September. Four x 1m² quadrats are counted in each plot, each day to monitor the rate of emergence. Plants are counted when the first leaves have unfurled/flattened. The Conventional treatment population is higher and more uniform than the Hybrid, which has been slower to emerge. This is likely to be related to lower soil temperature and soil conditions at planting.

Upcoming field walk

Our next field walk will be at 1pm on the 15th of October. Come along and join the conversation! Register here!

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When the Carbon Positive project began, most of the Operations Advisory Group probably thought “six years = six crops”. Certainly, the focus for the operations group has been on the summer crop(s). A lot of energy has been put into getting the operations right for each treatment. Our winter cover crops, initially thought to be just something that happens between cash crops, have turned out to be more important than expected. We are now seeing the project as growing twelve or thirteen crops in six years!

What to plant?

First off, what should we plant? I don’t think we have yet got our cover crop mixes quite right. This year, our hybrid and regen treatments were planted in a diverse mix of 7 species (black oats, tillage radish, vetch, buckwheat, sunflowers, crimson clover and Persian clover). This was to get lots of plant diversity over the winter.

A frost in May killed the buckwheat and sunflowers, which meant they weren’t present over the winter. We planted tillage radish as it is supposed to be the “crowbar of the soil” and will break through tillage pans. Unfortunately, our radishes knew better, hit the pan and, in some areas, popped themselves 10cm out of the ground. This is potentially an issue for both the hybrid and the regen treatments, as chunks of radish could be picked up by the harvester and end up at the factory which may be a problem for product contamination.

Additionally, the radish started to flower and was beginning to set seed, so radish if unmanaged, could have become be a new weed species for us.

In this conversation, there is the question of how much plant diversity do we need? Some of the species we are using, might be okay in a pastoral grazing scenario, but could be hard to manage in a cropping system and therefore become a weed for us. In the systems we are looking at, are we able to select fewer plants, that provide functional diversity, without adding added complexity of to the management of the cover crop?

Another consideration is disease carry over. We intentionally avoided planting tic beans this year, as they could carry unwanted diseases into the following legume crops. Tic beans may be an option ahead of other crops.

Do we graze?

One of the five regenerative principles is to integrate livestock, which we have not yet done in our Regen treatment. However we have grazed our Conventional treatment, which might seem a bit backwards. It is common for Heretaunga Plains growers to plant an annual ryegrass over the winter and graze it with lambs, so we are including sheep in our Conventional treatment.

In the last two years, we wanted to use the cover crop as a mulch on the surface for our main crop to keep the soil surface covered, another of our regenerative principles. If we have a mulch on the soil surface, we hope it will significantly reduce the need for herbicides. To do this effectively, we need to grow a lot of biomass, and therefore don’t want to have sheep or cattle grazing it. We don’t really have a long enough winter growing season to do both. This is where we find tension between some of the regen principles when applied to an annual cropping system. We might yet include livestock; however, we aren’t sure what this will look like in practice.

In addition, lambs can do considerable soil damage over the winter. The photos below show the difference between grazing for a couple of weeks in dry conditions and grazing over a wet weekend this winter.

When to terminate?

Ahead of the tomato planting last year, we had a cover crop of oats, vetch and lupins in the Regen treatment. You may remember that we planned to use a modified tomato planter, which transplants seedlings directly into a mulched cover crop, eliminating the need for both cultivation and herbicides. Just before planting, we met two problems with this plan.

The first issue was that the cover crop was still actively growing and sucking moisture out of the soil, so the soil was very dry in the regen treatment. This led to large, blocky clumps of soil forming in the top 10cm of the profile. The second issue was that the timing of maturity wasn’t right for mulching and killing the oats. In a test area of cover crop, we found the oats regrow, and we had very limited herbicide options to deal with this. It might have worked if we had waited a couple of weeks, however we were working with a factory schedule and had a planting date that wasn’t very flexible.

We want to apply lessons from that experience this year. We are already seeing low soil moisture levels and low nitrate levels in the Regen treatment. To manage the amount of biomass we have grown, and stop the flowering radish from seeding, the cover crop was mulched on the 1st of October. We expect the mulching will not kill the oats, and that we will need to manage regrowth.

How to terminate?

We planted a winter cover crop, it has grown all winter, so what next? Our Operations Advisory Group is having an ongoing discussion on how we terminate it in our Regen treatment. The initial plan was to use a roller crimper, but the consensus is that this is probably not quite the right tool for the job. We have since mulched the cover crop, but we will need another action to terminate it (oats weren’t mature enough). We have two options; we either spray out the oat regrowth or we cultivate to bury the residue.

This is an important conversation for us, as the use of glyphosate is not widely accepted by the Regenerative community. But our discussions with no-till or minimum tillage growers, and some of the Canterbury regenerative croppers, show it is an important tool for successfully reducing or eliminating cultivation. Most of the literature indicates that cultivating is the number one thing to avoid if we want to increase soil carbon, which is the main metric in this trial.

Weed management is a key consideration in beans as there are few herbicide options. If the crop is too weedy it won’t be harvested. If we cultivate, we will have to manage weeds through a suite of other herbicides that have the potential to as harmful as, or worse than glyphosate when compared using the Environmental Impact Quotient.

How do we best minimise soil disturbance? Both cultivation and herbicide use fall into the category of soil disturbance. The question for our operations group comes down to what is the ‘lesser of two evils’- glyphosate or cultivation?

More questions than answers!

A key lesson from the last two years, is that cover crops are important. We have also found that cover crop management is quite complex. There are a lot of questions we need to ask ourselves:

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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, and is located in the desert, receiving only 200 mm of rain per year. Despite this, the region is a hub of horticultural production, with 32,200 ha of greenhouses spread across the landscape (3.7% of the total area of the province), as well as around 30,000 of open-air production.

There are 12,500 farms with undercover production which generate more than 110,000 jobs. There are many small growers who are represented by grower co-operatives. In fact, there are enough co-operatives that secondary co-operatives exists which are ‘co-operatives of co-operatives’, for example Unica, which represents 15 co-operatives. The industry prides itself on being leaders in tech transfer to growers of all sizes, and strives for shared wealth creation, and keeping small farmers in business.

The annual turnover in the region is €4.4 billion, plus an additional €1.5 billion from the auxiliary industries including nurseries, R&D centers and suppliers (approx. €6 billion total per year). Given the region’s warm location, growers can achieve year-round production. The main crops grown are eggplants, zucchini, cucumber, tomato, pepper, melon, watermelon and lettuce. In total, 3.7 million tons of fruit and vegetables are produced each year. The first greenhouse was built in 1963 and since then has taken the province from one of the poorest in Andalusia to one of the wealthiest, now ranking above average in Spain.

In 2007 a program was started to implement biological controls in horticultural crops to produce residue free crops. In 2023, Almería had the largest area in the world using biological controls in vegetables, totaling 26,800ha.

Challenges

There are significant challenges to producing food in such an intensive way, and there has been much criticism of the region’s intensive production methods and the impact on the environment.

Water is unsurprisingly a key issue in a desert. Historically water has been extracted from groundwater, depleting underground aquifers. In recent years, desalination plants have been built to provide fresh water through reverse osmosis for both human consumption and irrigation, although water is still having to be extracted from the ground to meet demand.

Plastic use is also a challenge, with the plastic on the greenhouses being replaced by growers every 3 years, however the industry reports that 100% of the plastic is recycled.

The source of the region’s labour supply has faced criticism in recent years, in relation to the exploitation of migrant workers working in the greenhouses.

Netherlands- home of the modern glasshouse

As part of our trip, we travelled through The Netherlands, where we had the opportunity to visit Van der Harg in Bemmel. They grow and pack capsicums/bell pepper in their 8.6 ha of glasshouses. They are also experimenting with growing eggplants. The design of the Dutch glasshouse originated in Den Hague, and there are 10,000 ha of glasshouses in The Netherlands today, which largely grow bell pepper, eggplant, tomato and cucumbers.

The seedlings are grown at an independent nursery and planted into the glasshouse in November. The first fruit is harvested in February. Production lasts until October when the plants are pulled out and the greenhouse is prepared for the next crop. Interestingly, the crop is grown with few to no sprays, however the crop cannot be classified as organic as it is not grown directly in the soil. The plants are grown in ‘cultivation gutters’, where there are understory plantings which are used for pest control, and climate control.

The glasshouse is located in an Agropark, NextGarden, which allows participating growers to reduce their costs by ‘industrial symbiosis’; sharing resources and infrastructure. This includes collective power generation and a biodigester. By-products of the biodigester are captured (heat and CO2) and used by the glasshouses. There is also collective water harvesting systems that delivers clean rainwater for irrigation and processing.

Challenges

There are of course challenges to this system. The process of harvesting is labour intensive, with the labour supply coming from largely from countries like Romania. A robotic harvester has been developed, however must harvest ’27 hours a day’ to be the same cost as a human. Once they reach 24 hours, the human element of production will largely be gone.

Additionally, the strings used for training the capsicum plants are plastic. To maintain production levels they are not able to use biodegradable strings as they are not transparent enough and block too much light. The plastic string is used for just one season and is the major waste product of the system.

This system is energy intensive, particularly in heating over the winter months. However, Van der Harg are working with NextGarden Agropark to reduce or capture emissions, to power the glasshouse in a sustainable way.

Same challenges, different growing system

Regardless of growing system or location, the same conversations are happening globally, in relation to the challenges growers face. Water, energy, ethical labour supply, agrichemical use, and plastics are issues facing farmers and growers regardless of system or size.

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LandWISE Project Manager Alex Dickson discusses some of her thoughts on Regenerative Agriculture after her trip to Europe in June.

As I grapple with my own understanding of Regenerative Agriculture (RA), a trip to Europe was just the thing I needed to provide me with more questions than answers!

1. What are the right policy tools to support both sustainable food production and growers making a livelihood?
2. How does RA scale to go beyond a ‘buzz word’ to have a meaningful impact on the environment?
3. What role do large corporations play in the transition to Regen Ag?

EU Green Deal- Farm to Fork Policy

In 2020 the European Union introduced the Farm to Fork (FTF) policy as part of the EU Green Deal. The policy aims to rethink the whole food value chain, minimise the environmental impact of food production, improve resource efficiency and enhance biodiversity.

Targets set by the FTF include:

• 50% reduction in the use and risk of chemical pesticides by 2030
• 50% reduction in nutrient losses, while ensuring no deterioration in soil fertility by 2030
• 20% reduction in fertiliser use by 2030
• 50% reduction in the sales of antimicrobials for farmed animals and aquaculture by 2030
• 25% of total farmland to be farmed organically by 2030 (9.9% of farmed area was under organic farming in 2021).

These are ambitious targets. In response to these targets, European businesses of all sizes are having to rethink what ‘the system’ looks like in the future and how they fit into food production not only in the face of environmental policy like the FTF, but also in a changing natural environment.

“Regenerative practices are for the future, not for today”

A quote by Tony Salas (founder of Shared X, Peru) at the 2024 IFAMA Conference in a session dedicated to discussing the future Regenerative Agriculture. Shifting from conventional growing methods to regenerative methods shifts the focus from yield, to the management of a functional ecosystem with an emphasis on healthy soils.

Salas reflected on the challenges that the Organic Agricultural movement has had in scaling globally, in 2021 only about 1.6% of total agricultural land was managed organically, and in global food sales organic produce accounted for 1-2%. Such challenges include regulatory barriers, reduced yields, market and distribution challenges and lower profitability.

So what should the regenerative system approach be? How do we scale RA to improve ecosystem and soil health, AND ALSO feed a growing global population, meet increasingly stringent regulatory targets and provide farmers and growers with a good income? Three key points stood out;

1. Focus on adopting a continuous improvement model (Plan>Do>Check>Act) at all stages of the food-value chain
2. Develop flexible standards and avoid exclusive certification
3. Actions must be underpinned with a focus of minimising agricultures contribution to climate change.

“From ‘producing more with less’ to ‘producing more and restoring more’.”

A comment from Kai Wirtz from Bayer, one of the worlds largest agri-chemical companies. Bayer are putting Regenerative Agriculture (RA) at the heart of their company, with a vision to restore nature, and scale regenerative agriculture. They believe that it is possible to grow more using regenerative practices. Their sustainability commitments include reducing GHG emissions per kilogram of crop by 30%, reducing the environmental impact of crop protection by 30%, and supporting 100 million smallholder farms in low and middle-income countries.

Bayer has a global footprint, and they see their portfolio of products and technologies being integrated into regenerative agricultural systems, taking a multi-crop/multi-season approach to farming. This portfolio includes biologicals, crop protection, advanced seed breeding and digital tools.

“Regenerative agriculture is not a destination but a path”

I have arrived home with more questions than answers.

Europe appears to be leaning into regenerative agriculture in a big way, in response to not only stricter environmental policy, but also in what seems to be reasonably genuine concern for the future of the planet and our collective ability to feed a growing population. Large companies (like Bayer) are positioning themselves in the market to support growers in implementing regenerative practices to suit their individual farm systems in countries around the world. We see this in platforms like the Sustainable Agricultural Initiative (SAI), who have signed on over 180 global companies, with the shared goal of transforming agricultural practice for a more sustainable future.

Back in New Zealand, I wonder if we are taking regenerative agriculture serious enough? There are many unknowns, we don’t really know how RA works in NZ farm systems (though we are trying to find out) and change is scary – I find that in our own project. However, I think we know enough to have a go, to start exploring ways of improving management practice to restore ecosystem and soil health.

How do we scale regenerative agriculture in a way that we have meaningful impact on restoring the environment? How do we access the technologies being developed overseas to support change? What does the future of market access look like if we don’t adapt? What does the future of our environment look like if we don’t start to look after our soils?

Or to put it more positively, what does the future look like if we do start to look after our soils? What are the possibilities?

Some other interesting business to explore

• Koppert– Global biological company
• Biobest– Sustainable crop management
• Kimitec– Biotechnology company
• Biorizon– Biotechnology company

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