Facilitators: Derek Fairweather, CEO, Waikato Innovation Park, phone 07 857 0502, email derek@innovationwaikato.co.nz
                        Brendan Brier, Brier Ag Consultancy Ltd, phone 027 558 9011, email brendan.brier@xtra.co.nz

Programme

Beef + Lamb New Zealand is partnering with Innovation Waikato to implement a new Monitor Farm programme in the Waikato-Franklin region. 

Both parties are taking a fresh look at how to best work together. Together with the management committee, we have prioritised topic areas where we need to understand and monitor what changes will be made on farm over the three-year period. The fundamental difference is that these topics and changes will be made on many different farms rather than on a few selected whole farm systems.

For example, projects are being established to prepare farmers for and demonstrate the implications of the Emissions Trading Scheme (joining up MAF, Carbon Zero and researchers at Wintec). Another project will look at implementing RFID on farm, for the benefit of farm operations, in partnership with NAIT and key technology providers LIC and Gallaghers. 

A further area for investigation is to understand emerging export market consumer preferences that will affect both price schedules and farm practice, for example carbon foot print, traceability, sustainability, social responsibility and emerging health functionality demands in meat. 

It's early days, but the start of much tighter collaboration between many organisations to assist farmers in designing and operating their farms and businesses to maximise return in a very challenging environment.

Useful Documents