Country Life

Kohirā is a solar farm near Kaitaia that is experimenting with agrivoltaics - combining agriculture with harvesting the energy of the sun. They run sheep under the solar panels and are looking at other forms of ag to integrate into the farm.

The sheep grazing at a Northland solar farm seem to like spending a lot of time chilling in the shade of the solar panels, their farmer says.

It's the first lambing season at Lodestone's Kohirā Solar Farm, which started supplying the national grid with electricity alongside grazing sheep in February 2024.

There have been no scientific studies yet at the farm but Connor Dent, who looks after the 170-strong flock, has some observations on their behaviour.

"We see the sheep sitting down for longer periods than most farms, which means that they're sort of content, they're full."

The first lamb had just been born when Country Life visited the farm to check out agrivoltaics in action.

Hear more about agrivoltaics at Kohirā on Country Life

It turned out there was very little action apart from the occasional automatic tilting of the 61,000 panels as they tracked the sun.

Two metres below, the sheep don't flinch at the subtle movement and the biggest challenge was mustering early or late when the sheepdogs found it tricky to see through the arrays tilted at their lowest point, Dent said.

Pasture and sheep growth in partly shaded paddocks are yet to be evaluated, but things are ticking along well at the present stocking rate, he told Country Life.

"We're working to establish our stock numbers that the farm can handle - we don't really want to push this farm to the point where we're having to feed out."

Kōhira, which powers the equivalent of 7000 homes on 80 hectares of flat, former drystock land near Kaitāia, is Lodestone's first foray into agrivoltaics - grazing stock or growing crops alongside solar energy harvesting.

The dual farming system is a growing - albeit experimental - practice in other countries. Here in New Zealand, agrivoltaics is very much in its infancy.

In China, for instance, there are hundreds of projects incorporating farming with solar energy production, from vegetable greenhouses underneath solar panels in Hainan, to shrimp farming underneath arrays bolted to posts attached to the bottom of a bay in Tianjin.

And in Europe and North America, there are berry orchards, salad plots and even vineyards under panels.

Agrivoltaics is said to have many potential benefits (PDF), including less stress on the livestock and crops, with the panels providing shade and protection, improved productivity and added revenue for the farmer amid the ups and downs of weather and commodity prices…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Sheep breeders will increasingly have to address issues like animal welfare and the right to farm when they consider improving their sheep's genetics, experts say. But the biggest issue facing breeders is profitability.

Sheep breeders will increasingly have to address issues like animal welfare and the right to farm when they consider improving their sheep's genetics, according to experts.

But the biggest issue facing breeders is profitability, they say.

Those issues, and how genetic selection can improve sheep traits and boost farm profits, were among the talking points at the Sheep Breeders' Forum field day on Banks Peninsula this week.

"Genetics really is an enabler. It's enabled us to get more fertility into our flocks and grow our lambs to heavier carcass weights without going over fat," said Jason Archer, head of genetics at Beef and Lamb New Zealand.

The last Sheep Breeders Forum - which was held in 2021 - was cancelled on day one after an attendee tested positive for Covid, so there's been lots to catch up on.

"It's a chance for breeders to get together, to network, to talk about common problems, to ask us questions, but also to ask questions of each other and, I guess, advance the cause of sheep breeding in New Zealand, " Dr Archer told Country Life.

With climate change, changing market requirements and environmental challenges, he thinks the sheep industry will take three genetic paths in the future.

"One is, there'll be some breeders that stay with the strong wool, there'll be some breeders that take the wool right off, and then fining up the clip is another strategy that another group will probably take."

The sheep of the future will also carry more social baggage than those of today, he said.

"We're going to have to address issues like welfare, and a right to farm animals is going to become an increasing thing in the future too."

Sheep farming is also under scrutiny due to the greenhouse gas emissions of the animals, so developing a low-methane-emitting sheep, without sacrificing productivity, is a top priority.

"Everywhere you go, people are talking about reducing methane outputs from sheep, cattle and other animals. It's not a New Zealand thing, it's a worldwide thing," he said.

So how are these genetic improvements made in sheep?

"It comes down to measuring animals, knowing what performance they are and then selecting them," Dr Archer said.

An element of patience is required though. It can take many generations of sheep to achieve genetic gains. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Apple growers in Hawkes Bay are busy pruning trees and pulling out old blocks. Further south, farmers on the West Coast are feeding out silage, moving breaks and getting ready for calving.

It's been one of the "kindest" winters for Northland growers, certainly one of the best in recent years. Our contact described the conditions as more like a late autumn, with lots of sunshine. Plenty of feed means the cattle market is strong, prices are good though there's less stock around due to changing land uses and farming practices. It's driving the store market as farmers looking to fatten stock up on the extra feed.

In Pukekohe, shed-stored onions and pumpkin along with recently grown outdoor vegetables remain in abundant supply. June has been mild with adequate rainfall, while July has brought cooler weather.

Most dairy farmers are getting ready for or already well into calving.

Waikato has also had very favourable conditions. Our dairy farmer friend says pasture cover is higher than usual which means cows are in better condition. Things are generally pretty good though the latest global dairy trade prices were "disappointing". In a few weeks, most dairy farmers will be right into calving. Preparations are underway in the meantime.

In Bay of Plenty, the kiwifruit harvest is now complete with growers busy pruning, tying down vines and making any changes on orchard. With 197 million trays sold, it's thought to be their biggest season ever and growers are confident about marketing results. It's a different story for avo growers, where picking is soon to start. Fruit is looking good and there are high hopes for better prices this year after last season's domestic glut due to poor weather.

Avocado growers are hopeful of a better season, after last year's bad weather led to fewer exports and a flooded domestic market.

It's been a good run up to winter for King Country farmers. There's plenty of feed around and one sheep and beef farmer described conditions this week as spring like. Pregnancy scanning results were good and things were "ticking along nicely". He just has his hoggets to scan next month. With low returns on sheep, farmers are knuckling down and trying to reduce spending. Most have been busy with maintenance jobs like fencing or trying to get off farm for a bit.

Taranaki farmers have also had a good season. Our dairy farmer in Ōpunake had good autumn calving rates and was busy with winter milking. Others he knew were already a week into their calving for spring milking. With rainfall down it was a slightly drier winter but there was plenty of feed. Grass and crops like maize and oats, had seen moderate to good growth.

The orange harvest is soon to start…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Farmers in Te Tai Rāwhiti have made huge progress since Cyclone Gabrielle wreaked havoc on the region last year. However, successive severe weather events mean the work is far from over.

Huge progress has been made in clearing farms and orchards in East Coast-Te Tai Rāwhiti of debris and damage left in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle last year.

However, the work is far from over, with repeated storms in recent months adding to the challenge.

Listen to Vicki Crosswell of the East Coast Rural Support Trust

Vicki Crosswell came on board as coordinator of the East Coast Rural Support Trust, supporting farmers and growers through such adverse events, just after the storm hit.

In those early days the need was as simple as "to know someone cared", she says.

The advice to those feeling overwhelmed and unsure where to begin was to "do what you can, not what you want to", taking the time to assess the damage and make a plan of attack from there.

"So much has been achieved which is a credit to landowners," Crosswell says. "The progress is a lot of flat has been refenced so it's useable land again."

However, storms like the one which hit last week create a further setback and slowdown gains made on clearing more difficult, hill country land.

The Waipaoa River in flood after recent heavy rainfall.

Crosswell doesn't want people to assume things have gone back to normal.

"We're still struggling."

Despite the challenges, farmers are "pretty positive" and proud of the gains made these past few months.

One positive to come from the successive adverse weather events is the trust has seen a lot more gatherings, with community coming together off-farm.

"It's great to see the humour and the smiles and banter," she says.

The East Coast Rural Support Trust - which includes Te Tai Rāwhiti, Hawke's Bay, Tararua and Wairarapa - is part of a national network of charitable trusts which support rural communities.

You can find more information about the trust and its services here.

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Sandra Heihei is the 17th generation of her family living in remote Taemaro Bay. She and her husband Alfonso live off grid and are among kaitiaki of this ancestral coastal land. Passing on knowledge of and respect for the whenua is her goal.

In the Far North, a rough road snakes its way through bush between the harbours of Mangonui and Whangaroa on the region's eastern coast.

After a while, the road dips steeply down to the coastline and Taemaro Bay.

Here, there are a few off-grid homes dotted among the pōhutukawa trees and in one of them you'll find Sandra and Alfonso Heihei.

Meet Sandra and Alfonso Heihei of Taemaro Bay on Country Life

On the beach of this remote scallop-shaped cove you might find the couple walking the dog or having a cup of tea on the beach, just metres from their house.

Alfonso (Ngāpuhi) is the great-grandson of a whaler who jumped ship near Kerikeri, to whom he can trace his native American roots.

Sandra (Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa) can trace her roots 16 generations back to Te Māmaru, the waka carrying migrants who settled this area.

Taemaro was once a busy place and Sandra knows it well - where the food gardens, the māra kai, once were, where her tūpuna lived at the the pā kainga, and where the whalers landed their catch, a shingly bay where you can still see the ship nails hammered into the rocks.

Each little inlet and hilltop has a name.

"There's always a kōrero to a name and a meaning.

"Underneath the scrub you would see platforms and terraces and pits and that's where the old people used to live," she tells Country Life, pointing out areas to her left and right now covered in vegetation.

The dunes forming a platform on the edge of the golden sand were formed by a tsunami in the 1800s, and used for storing kumara and rīwai on beds of fern, she says.

"It's a place where the old people used to do their living really, their mahi to live. They grew their food, they did their gardening, they harvested their korari, their flaxes, and they just lived and breathed the land that's here."

The majority of their land was taken, apart from land reserved for them in 1865. A marae was built "so the old people could have a voice" to try to protect their burial sites, their food gardens, their resources.

The Catholic church became integral to the community, Sandra says, and a church and school were built too. They were later moved to near Kaeo where there were more resources for the children and the community.

Everything used to be done in a sustainable manner and she is saddened to see commercial longliners constantly out fishing. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

Regenerative farming suits Mark Anderson down to the ground. He's focused on putting as much life and diversity back into the land and says the benefits to the entire farm, and his own well-being, are evident.

Regenerative agriculture suits Mark Anderson down to the ground.

He is focussed on putting as much life and diversity back into the land as possible, and says the benefits to the entire farm, and his own well-being, are evident.

"The landscape is generally a mirror image of the farmer. If it's healthy, then the farmer's healthy and it's the same for the animals," he says.

Click here to listen to Mark's regenerative journey

Mark is the sixth-generation Anderson to farm the 600-hectare property between Balclutha and Gore, but the first to move away from a conventional farming system.

Initially, it was stress that made him seek out a more natural alternative to intensive farming.

"There were a series of tension events, so increasing debt, low milk pay-outs and I had an auto-immune disorder. So we decided to look at the root causes and address them."

Research led Mark and his wife Madelaine to regenerative agriculture, and they have never looked back.

One of the first things to go was the fertiliser silo in the farmyard.

"I had to get my head around re-establishing the nitrogen cycle naturally and the mineral cycle."

For nearly a decade, Anderson has worked at improving soil health and increasing plant diversity, and it is starting to pay off.

"When botanists from Lincoln University were here they counted over 30 species in this paddock and we've also introduced agroforestry."

Young walnut and pecan nut trees are planted 25 metres apart in the paddock.

"I've heard that for every species you introduce, you bring in at least another four."

Apple and pear trees and native plants are being planted on other parts of the farm too.

Anderson is designing a system that comes under "the umbrella of alley cropping" - a system that harvests food from the alleys between the grazing paddocks.

He wants the farm to produce nuts, fruit and honey, as well as tasty greens for the milk-producing cows.

Moving away from using chemical fertilisers to replenish the soil has helped the bank balance.

"Profitability has improved because we're not spending $200,000 to $250,000 a year on fertiliser!"

It has been replaced by high stock density grazing, with cows recycling nutrients, effluent spreading, bale grazing and composting.

This year, Mark has made three kilometres of compost rows. Each is three metres wide and 300 metres long…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

This week the Country Life team spends a night out tracking kiwi in the capital, meets a family living off-grid on their ancestral land in the Far North and visits a South Otago dairy farm where compost has replaced chemical fertilisers.

This week the Country Life team spends a night out tracking kiwi in the capital, meets a family living off-grid on their ancestral land in the Far North and visits a South Otago dairy farm where compost has replaced chemical fertilisers

Listen to the latest edition of Country Life

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

A round-up of the week's agricultural news from RNZ's rural news desk.

A round up of the week's primary sector news from the RNZ rural news team.

Listen to the agricultural news weekly round-up on Country Life

Farmers and growers in Te Tai Rāwhiti have had anxious times this week after a weather bomb hit and are still assessing damage from the heavy rain and flooding.

Ewe pregnancy rates are down in Canterbury likely due to deteriorated feed conditions at the time the ram went out.

Farmers on the Chatham Islands have reverted to mustering stock on horseback after the island ran out of petrol. On top of this, farmers have had to cull stock because they haven't been able to transport animals off island as normal since April, while a transport vessel undergoes repairs. More on this here.

Many olive oil producers have had a horror season, just as they were hoping to plug supply gaps caused by drought elsewhere in the world. RNZ's story is here .

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

A night out tracking the new kiwi which call Wellington, and Terawhiti Station, home with the Capital Kiwi Project team.

By Gianina Schwanecke

Standing beneath the 110-metre wind turbine atop Terawhiti Station on Wellington's southwest coast, there is barely a breeze blowing.

Below these steep hills, the ordinarily dark and choppy seas of the Cook Strait are smooth like glass and the sky is a soft pink as dusk beckons.

With such excellent conditions, Paul Ward, founder and project lead for Capital Kiwi Project, is especially hopeful we will be treated to a kiwi call tonight.

"Everything is primed to hear those birds."

Tune in to the sound of kiwi with Country Life

Since 2022, 138 kiwi-nui (North Island Brown kiwi) have been released onto the farm here, which forms part of a "very intense" 24,000-hectare network of protection comprising more than 4600 traps.

On Terawhiti alone, there are about 1000 traps targeting the kiwi chick's number one enemy: stoats.

While adult kiwi can fight off stoats, the challenge lies between chicks hatching and getting to a "fighting weight of about 1.1-1.2 kilos", Ward says.

The "surprise arrival" of two kiwi chicks on the property late last year - Wellington's first wild-born birds in over 150 years - demonstrated a "proof of concept" for the project.

With some diligent pest-management and a bit of a helping hand, kiwi could reestablish themselves in the wild and go on to find mates and breed.

"Our job is to supercharge those efforts. It comes down to maths and a bit of sex," says Ward.

Jeff Hall, the project's field services ranger, says people are often surprised by the adaptability of kiwi and other manu species.

"They can just about live anywhere," he says.

Several of the birds released were fitted with transmitters, allowing the team to track and monitor their progression like we are doing now.

Hall has been happy with the initial monitoring results and is proud to say they have not lost any adult birds. Some have even gained weight, about 20-25 percent more, since being released, leading to jokes they're frequenting the Karori takeaways over the Mākara hill.

The team tries to check with the transmitters about once a week or a fortnight, and is able to get valuable information back about where the kiwi are and what they might be doing based on the number of pings they get. It comes down to "line of sight".

"It's always a bit of a needle and haystack when it comes to walking a ridge," Hall says as he sets the transmitter up. It is even rarer to hear the birds calling…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details

People in the small farming community of Staveley in Canterbury are hoping their newly upgraded ice rink can stand up to global warming after locals pitched in to pay for a new refrigeration system.

People in the small farming community of Staveley in Canterbury are hoping their newly upgraded ice rink can stand up to global warming after locals pitched in to pay for a new refrigeration system.

Listen to the story here

They've been sharpening up their ice skates and dusting down their curling brooms for another season of winter sports on the rink, which has been attracting skaters and curlers since 1951.

It's hoped the upgrade will mean the community gets three full months out of the ice from now on.

Rob Withers of the Staveley Hall Society, which manages the ice rink, says $1.4 million was raised for the refurb - half of that from local donors.

"We had volunteers that did 4000 hours of community work for us too, and a lot of them were local farmers," Withers said.

https://players.brightcove.net/6093072280001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6355411126112

Ice skating has always been part of Withers' life. He was born and bred on a nearby farm.

"'We were lucky as kids. My father was a skater and taught us to skate and, yeah, we just wanted to keep it going."

The shady rink is surrounded by native bush and looks towards a snow-skiffed Mount Somers. In a shelter near the ice, a huge fire keeps people warm.

Cooking marshmallows is an après-skate must for most of the younger skaters, and long wire spikes with wooden handles are provided.

The rink is large enough to accommodate a proper game of hockey and it's proving popular with kids.

"On a Monday afternoon after school, we've got 20 children getting coached for ice hockey, which is going to start next week."

On Tuesday and Thursday it hosts the Windwhistle Curling Club and on Friday it's a learn-to-curl night. The weekends are the busiest, though.

People come from as far afield as Christchurch and Ashburton to don boots and get on the ice.

When Country Life popped in, about 150 people were at the rink.

A child falls over and gets up, smiling. It's the first time she's been on ice.

An elderly man does elegant twirls nearby.

"We need to cater for families and I think, just looking out there now, you can see people are very happy," Withers said.

He organises special rink-nights for the local community, too.

"We open the shed up for them to use the curling stones and ice skates and there's no charge. It's a payback for our community, who have put so much into this."

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details