Australian teams to help repair North Canterbury irrigators after storm
Moves are afoot to get a team of Australians over here to help repair North Canterbury's irrigation machinery, ravaged by the big windstorm of late October.
The Bucket Test app is another addition to the CropX toolkit, says Eitan Dan, managing director of CropX New Zealand.
Irrigation NZ and global farm management company CropX have established a joint venture agreement for the Bucket Test app.
The app is an irrigation efficiency tool that has been used thousands of times to determine application depth, rate and how uniformly water is being applied during an irrigation event. The simple method is based on collecting irrigation water in strategically placed buckets and measuring water collected over a period of time.
The app is used to collate this data and walks you through the steps to collect all relevant inputs, then provides the results instantly to your phone or smart device and e-mails a summary report.
“The Bucket Test app is another addition to the CropX toolkit,” explains Eitan Dan, managing director of CropX New Zealand.
“We’ve seen farmers in many countries crying out for an accurate way to measure irrigation efficiency, so the app offers a ready-made solution that we can now bring to them.”
The Bucket Test works well alongside CropX’s patented Soil Sensor which is embedded with their sophisticated, yet easy to use digital platform.
Eitan acknowledges that as environmental legislation and consumer expectations are tightening the screws on New Zealand farmers, there is an urgent need to measure environmental impacts and increase efficiency.
Having originally developed the app with Regen, Irrigation NZ is excited to work with CropX to further develop the tool.
“We’re very proud of the work we’ve done with Regen to develop a tool that takes the guesswork out of assessing irrigation infrastructure performance,” says Vanessa Winning, chief executive of IrrigationNZ.
“It’s been used thousands of times since development with great outcomes. CropX’s expertise means we will be able to improve the app even further and deliver greater value to our members,” says Winning.
Canterbury farmer Michelle Pye has been elected to Fonterra’s board for a three-year term.
Farmers are welcoming the announcement of two new bills to replace the under-fire Resource Management Act.
The Government has announced it will immediately roll over all resource consents for two years, with legislation expected to pass under urgency as early as this week.
The New Zealand National Fieldays Society has achieved a major sustainability milestone - reducing its greenhouse gas emissions and reaching the target five years early.
Fonterra's 2025/26 financial year is off to a strong start, with a first quarter group profit after tax of $278 million- up $15m on the previous year.
Government plans to get rid of regional councillors shows a lack of understanding of the fundamental problem affecting all of local government - poor governance.