Moving animals, farms come with key responsibilities
Moving farms or relocating your herd to a new place comes with important responsibilities as a PICA (Person in Charge of Animals) in the NAIT system.
A mate of the Hound – a former technician and founder of an electronics business – reckons the NAIT system has many big flaws.
Firstly, he reckons the system’s passive RFID works by reflecting its code to the antennae of the reader, but the reflective device (inside the ear tag) is easily destroyed by high voltage. “This is well known in the RFID industry,” the Hound’s mate explains. “But not apparently by NAIT.” Meanwhile, he also reckons NAIT information relies on people updating the system – known as batch processing – as it occurs after an event. “This is old fashioned and obsolete as the system needs to operate in real time to be effective.” He also says the current NAIT model with its multiple levels of reporting and animal handling is a recipe for failure.
Fonterra's 2025/26 financial year is off to a strong start, with a first quarter group profit after tax of $278 million- up $15m on the previous year.
Government plans to get rid of regional councillors shows a lack of understanding of the fundamental problem affecting all of local government - poor governance.
It’s official, lamb will take centre stage on Kiwi Christmas tables this year.
For over 20 years, Whakatane farmer Gerard Van Beek has been attending Fonterra annual general meetings with the same message - it's time to include lactose in the co-op's farmgate milk price model.
Retiring Fonterra director Andy Macfarlane believes the co-operative has made good progress over the past decade but adds that there's still a way to go.
Visiting US climate change expert Dr Will Happer says the idea of reducing cow numbers to greatly reduce methane emissions is crazy.

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