OPINION: More than three decades ago, I was part of a group who received a monthly audio cassette tape from international leadership statesman, Dr. John Maxwell.
OPINION: Succession and long-term planning are perennial topics because it is perpetually sidelined on busy farms.
OPINION: One of the privileges of judging the Ballance Farm Environment Awards for more than a decade is the opportunity to spend time on farms and orchards across New Zealand and hear from people constantly looking for ways to improve their businesses.
OPINION: Get offside with New Zealand First leader Winston Peters at your own peril.
OPINION: Groundswell's opinion of the incumbent farm industry representatives isn't high.
OPINION: It appears to be difficult for people who haven’t tried to run a business to understand the difference between assets and cash.
OPINION: David Seymour and James Meager's plan to make it easier for farmers and orchardists to operate drones can best be described a 'courageous' move.
Ballance Agri-Nutrients has released its latest fertiliser outlook, detailing some of the current global trends influencing fertiliser supply. Ballance head of procurement Shane Crean takes part in a Q&A in the report:
OPINION: In politics, credibility is and should be big. It must surely rank higher than charisma, which is quite trite and superficial. Yet, voters nowadays are often wooed and influenced by how someone looks or talks at a superficial level. TV plays a huge role in this.
OPINION: Flicking through some global news headlines just recently, I spotted something tucked away, which in my opinion rather conveniently had less visibility than it deserved.
OPINION: In the 1980s, concern was expressed in West Germany about the falling birth rate. Some simple analysis was performed by Professor Helmut Sies, physician and biochemist at Dusseldorf University. His letter ‘A new parameter for sex education’ was published in Nature in 1988:
OPINION: The time has come for the Government to back the organic sector.
Having judged at the Japan Wine Challenge in both 2024 and 2025, I’m looking forward to returning to the role in Tokyo this October.
In the lead-up to Te Wiki o te Reo Māori 2026, which runs from 14–21 September, viticulturist Jeff Sinnott, a founding member of the Tuku Māori Winemakers Collective, urges New Zealand’s wine industry to embrace and protect te reo Māori.
“The first conviction we need as wine drinkers,” Andrew Jefford once wrote, “is to spend less time thinking about grape varieties, and pay more attention to the places wines come from and the cultures in which they come into being. All the grape variety does is present a spectrum of opportunities.”
OPINION: Dairy farmers know better than anyone that change is constant.
OPINION: As the general election approaches, political parties are churning out policies in the hope of attracting more votes.
OPINION: After hogging the media limelight for telling a NZ Chinese MP to "go back home", Winston Peters has decided to focus on a domestic issue - oil and gas drilling.
OPINION: With fuel prices soaring, one would have expected most farmers to be reclaiming excise duty on petrol.
OPINION: The world's first floating dairy farm, once hailed as a vision of farming's future, is up for sale after seven years.
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