Eat more fruit, stay healthy
Nutritionists are urging Kiwis to kickstart their day with a piece of fresh fruit to help improve their health and wellbeing this autumn.
Robotics has moved out of the talking stage and into the early doing stages, says the chief executive of Plant and Food Research, David Hughes.
Keeping listeners attentive at the recent HortNZ conference, Hughes teamed up with namesake Professor David Hughes – emeritus professor of food marketing, Imperial College London, to discuss the topic.
Together they gave a futuristic view of technologies and ideas the horticultural sector can expect.
David Hughes, a New Zealander, says in just the last year, various robotic companies in different countries had done field trials on different crops -- strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, lettuces and asparagus. And there had been plenty to interest NZ in trials of robotic picking of apples and kiwifruit.
But picking by hand still remains cheaper, he says.
“But the cost of robotics is coming down sharply and you can see a point where those two lines will cross and robotics will be the cheaper option.”
Hughes says the widely held view is that technology will reduce labour costs. True, he says, but other benefits may reduce costs over a whole sector and so improve producers’ returns.
For example, while using robotics for loading containers onto ships saves money, the real gain is that robotics enables shipping companies to more precisely schedule their ships to avoid having them wait to be loaded.
“Absolute precision in loading schedules saves a lot more money than just the cost of labour. So in the horticultural industry, yes there will be labour benefits, but I think there will be lots of secondary benefits we can’t see,” he says.
Hughes says a big benefit of robotics and technology for horticulture is its ability to gather and immediately act on information a human or handpicker cannot act on.
“If a robot is picking, it can be programmed to record and sort all the individual information about a single piece of fruit. This could be which bin it might go into, whether it be put on a vessel to go to Japan tomorrow because it is perfect for the Japanese market or whether it should be put into storage for six months and sold in another market.”
South Waikato farm manager Ben Purua’s amazing transformation from gang life to milking cows was rewarded with the Ahuwhenua Young Maori Farmer award last night.
Bankers have been making record profits in the last few years, but those aren’t the only records they’ve been breaking, says Federated Farmers vice president Richard McIntyre.
The 2023-24 season has been a roller coaster ride for Waikato dairy farmers, according to Federated Farmers dairy section chair, Mathew Zonderop.
Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) director general Ray Smith says job cuts announced this morning will not impact the way the Ministry is organised or merge business units.
Scales Corporation is acquiring a number of orchard assets from Bostock Group.
Family and solidarity shone through at the 75 years of Ferdon sale in Otorohanga last month.
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