On Your Behalf: Health and Safety Checklist for Vineyards and Wineries
Keeping healthy and safe during vintage 2026
A mate of the Hound’s, recently back home in Wakefield, Nelson following a month in Christchurch for medical treatment, reckons health and safety, ACC and other rules being imposed on farmers are ridiculous compared to other risky sectors.
A month in the big smoke exposed our man from Wakefield to hundreds of people indulging in the latest craze to hit our cities – Lime scooters.
He reports that he saw none of these scooter riders wearing helmets, and more often than not two people were hanging off one scooter, weaving in and out of traffic on footpaths or broken roads damaged by the earthquakes.
As he rightly pointed out to yours truly, “One has to question how much in ACC or WorksafeNZ fees the scooter operators are paying and what, so far, are the mounting costs of scooter accidents NZ-wide.”
The proposed retrenchment of Heinz Wattied's manufacturing presenced in New Zealand will be a blow to the wallets of more than 200 Canterbury vegetable growers.
The cost of running a New Zealand farm is now 27% higher than it was before Covid, putting sustained pressure on profitability acrfoss the sector, according to new ANZ research.
Rural contractors are getting guidance on how to deal with recent rising fuel prices.
An Ōpunake farmer with a poor effluent system has been fined $35,000 with a discount on the penalty discarded after he charged at a Taranaki Regional Council officer inspecting the ‘systematic problems’ on his farm.
The horticulture sector is under threat because of vulnerabilities of the country's transport infrastructure, according to a report commissioned by a collective representing a range of groups in the sector.
Silver Fern Farms chief executive Dan Boulton says the meat processor wants to find ways of getting product destined for Middle East markets into those markets as opposed to try and place them elsewhere.