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: Cows can be toilet trained. It's no joke.
University of Auckland affiliated researchers Lindsay Matthews and Douglas Elliffe believe their research with German colleagues could help reduce water contamination and greenhouse gas emissions.
If cows could be trained to urinate in a 'toilet', at least some of the time, nitrogen could be captured and dealt with before it reaches waterways or turns into nitrous oxide gas. Matthews and Elliffe's research has been published in the prestigious journal Current Biology and is profiled in Science.
The challenges of high-performance sport and farming are not as dissimilar as they may first appear.
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.