Thursday, March 28, 2024

CHANGEMAKER: Smart, sustainable and sassy

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This Wednesday we discuss how to turn your irrigation into a smart pivot, Honest Wolf’s journey from handpiece to handbag, and how hops breeding is key to beer and a sustainability-produced New Zealand beef patty.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Game-changing ‘smart’ pivot

A group of software engineers in Feilding have been developing a prototype of a game-changing irrigation system known as a ‘smart’ pivot. 

Lindsay’s (producer of the Zimmatic™ brand of pivot irrigators) smart pivot is a new category of mechanised irrigation that moves beyond traditional water application and management to a wide array of crop health capabilities, diagnosing its own operating faults, and even can launch a drone to manage crops at leaf level.

Zimmatic’s technology strategy advisor Stu Bradbury will explain.

 

From handpiece to handbag

A Rangitikei couple has used their initiative and entrepreneurial spirit to combine their strong wool and family story with social media marketing, to create a new business they can run from the farm.

Sam and Sophie are the third generation of Hurleys to farm Papanui Estate, the family operation started by Sam’s grandfather Ray in the 1950s. The young farming couple were looking for new avenues for their wool, and a couple of years ago, they saw an opportunity which led them to their value-added wool fashion business Honest Wolf.

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Sustainable beef patty trial a success

A sustainability-produced New Zealand beef patty is set to become the new norm following a year-long trial to develop a verified sustainable beef model providing transparency to customers.

Key players in the red meat industry partnered with the Ministry for Primary Industries’ (MPI) Sustainable Food & Fibre Futures fund to develop the model for producing independently verified sustainable beef through the entire supply chain.

NZ Roundtable for Sustainable Beef chair Grant Bunting joins us to explain the programme.

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New hop cultivars with unique flavours for premium beer

Plant & Food Research’s hop breeding programme has pioneered the release of a series of highly successful seedless triploid cultivars. The breeding programme focuses on developing high-performing bittering-type hops and novel aromatic-type hops that impart unique flavours for beer.

Plant & Food Research scientist Kerry Templeton, who specialises in premium crops and technology, will explain how the cultivar development will position NZ’s hop growing regions into the future.

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