The sky is the limit at Felton Road
Felton Road Wines is using an electric drone sprayer to apply organic fungicides and monitor crops, cutting emissions and transforming management.
If you bring a drone up slowly on cattle you can observe them, but once you chase them with drones they don't forget, says Dr Temple Grandin.
You can observe cattle with drones, and you can handle them with drones, "but you're probably going to have a bad time trying to do both," she says.
"Let's say I wanted to look at cattle with drones and I also wanted to chase cattle with drones. I would need different drones with different sounds. So they might learn that one brand of drone is ok but the other brand with a different sound is bad.
"I would want to get them used to being observed with drones first before I'd start chasing them with drones. If you just get in there and start chasing first, they are going to be afraid of all drones. You aren't going to be able to observe them; they will run away from them."
Grandin says she has seen a video of a drone flown high above cattle, then moved over and slowly lowered down. The cattle just looked up at it.
"Make sure at the beginning that your cattle don't have a scary experience with a drone because then they will be scared of all drones. The initial experience should be just observing them with it; then if I wanted to chase them I'd never use the 'good' drone I initially trained them with."
A chase drone needs to look very different from the observing drone. "I'd get another one that was the 'bad' one and I might tie a flag or ribbons or something to the back of it to make it look even more different."
On the eve of his departure from Federated Farmers board, Richard McIntyre is thanking farmers for their support and words of encouragement during his stint as a farmer advocate.
A project reducing strains and sprains on farm has won the Innovation category in the New Zealand Workplace Health and Safety Awards 2025.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ), in partnership with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and other sector organisations, has launched a national survey to understand better the impact of facial eczema (FE) on farmers.
One of New Zealand's latest and largest agrivoltaics farm Te Herenga o Te Rā is delivering clean renewable energy while preserving the land's agricultural value for sheep grazing under the modules.
Global food company Nestle’s chair Paul Bulcke will step down at its next annual meeting in April 2026.
Brendan Attrill of Caiseal Trust in Taranaki has been announced as the 2025 National Ambassador for Sustainable Farming and Growing and recipient of the Gordon Stephenson Trophy at the National Sustainability Showcase at in Wellington this evening.