Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Our Land and Water Fund projects greenlighted

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Fifteen projects ranging from studying the impact of regenerative farming on meat quality to the feasibility of growing bananas as forage for dairy cattle have been greenlighted after being granted funding from the Our Land and Water Rural Professionals Fund.
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The fund enables individuals and businesses to partner with scientists to test exciting and innovative ideas that could lead to significant improvements in farming systems.

The fund was launched in May 2020, with investment of up to $50,000 awarded to projects that could test ideas and innovations within six months.

AgFirst’s Steve Howarth, along with Grandad’s Beef farmer Tracey Bayliss and AgResearch’s Katherine Tozer, will look to see if regenerative farming can improve meat quality, particularly intramuscular fat and flavour.

If proven to be the case, it provides a significant opportunity to produce and market premium meat products from surplus New Zealand dairy industry livestock. 

This could increase farm profitability, reduce the environmental footprint and lead to increased sustainability of the NZ pastoral industry.

“This project will test the hypothesis that regenerative farming produces cattle with better meat quality compared to equivalent conventionally finished animals and is associated with increased pasture diversity,” its synopsis said.

In another project, AgResearch’s Warren King and Robyn Dynes will work alongside Northland-based Kahurangi Farms’ Graeme Edwards to deliver a proof of concept that growing bananas on Northland dairy farms will increase its economic and environmental sustainability.

“With appropriate cultivars, management and location, bananas are capable of being persistent and productive. This creates an opportunity to use banana plant material as feed for livestock. In addition, growing bananas using effluent as the source of nutrients could become a key component of a dairy farm effluent system,” it said.

Some of the other projects to receive funding include:

A study of sediment traps on hill country farms to better protect waterways.

How better pasture production can be created on dairy farms on areas where there are trees.

A project to enable farmers to directly measure ecological health, nutrient and sediment status in water that drains critical source areas on their farms.

A project to determine if drones can be used to efficiently demonstrate environmental compliance and ecological sustainability.

Applications were reviewed by representatives of Our Land and Water, NZIPIM and MPI. All projects are required to extend what is learned to the wider rural profession and farming community.

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