Seeds of change
A proposed recycling levy on commonly used polyethylene woven seed sacks and bags is likely to come into effect next year.
Since starting up in 2007, the Agrecovery Rural Recycling programme has seen more than one million kilograms of container plastic recycled.
And the past 12 months have shown how much the programme is taking off. Provisional results show that in the 12 months up to June, 15,495kg of unwanted chemicals and 240,732kg of recycled plastic were collected by Agrecovery. That's a 50% jump in container recycling over a two-year period. What's more the recycling of this amount of product versus using new plastic, saves energy equivalent to 452,000 litres of petrol.
There are six regional collections held in Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne, Greater Wellington, Marlborough and Canterbury. The industry-good programme is New Zealand's solution for the disposal of unwanted agrichemicals (including those used in wineries and vineyards) and the recycling of empty plastic packaging.
Trade Minister Todd McClay says New Zealand has no intention of backing down in a trade dispute with Canada over dairy products.
There have been leadership changes at the Hamilton-based Dairy Goat Co-operative, which has been struggling financially in recent years.
Horticulture NZ chief executive Nadine Tunley will step down in August.
OPINION: In recent years farmers have been crying foul of unworkable and expensive regulations.
Another 16 commercial beef farmers have been selected to take part in the Informing New Zealand Beef (INZB) programme designed to help drive the uptake of genetics in the industry.
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Kiwi exporters will be $100 million better off today as the NZ-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) comes into force.