Cuddling cows
OPINION: Years of floods and low food prices have driven a dairy farm in England's northeast to stop milking its cows and instead charge visitors to cuddle them.
OPINION: The heat wave that hit Europe last week has forced a rethink among UK dairy farmers who normally graze their cows outdoors in summer.
There has been a drive to ensure that as much of the UK dairy herd as possible grazes outdoors in summer. But the industry is slowly waking up to the fact that being out on grass is not always a good thing, says Tom Chamberlain, a vet and farming consultant.
Chamberlain is working with farmers who are trialling the practice of bringing their cows indoors during the daytime. He says that cows start to suffer once the temperature goes above 20˚C.
"A cow in 25C hear feels like we would in 40˚C," says Ed Bailey at George Farm Vets in Wiltshire. "They are very sensitive to heat because of the fermentation tank inside their bodies - it constantly produces a lot of heat."
The heatwave also forced French farmers to install huge fans to keep their cows cool as temperatures touched 40 degrees.
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HortNZ's CEO, Kate Scott says they are starting to see the substantial cumulative effects on their members of the two disastrous flood events in the Nelson Tasman region.
In an ever-changing world, things never stay completely the same. Tropical jungles can turn into concrete ones criss-crossed by motorways, or shining cities collapse into ghost towns.
Labour's agriculture spokesperson Jo Luxton says while New Zealand needs more housing, sacrificing our best farmland to get there is not the answer.
Profitability issues facing arable farmers are the same across the world, says New Zealand's special agricultural trade envoy Hamish Marr.
Over 85% of Fonterra farmer suppliers will be eligible for customer funding up to $1,500 for solutions designed to drive on-farm efficiency gains and reduce emissions intensity.
OPINION: Years of floods and low food prices have driven a dairy farm in England's northeast to stop milking its…
OPINION: An animal activist organisation is calling for an investigation into the use of dairy cows in sexuallly explicit content…