Food, Farming & Freshwater Roadshow Balclutha

Food, Farming & Freshwater Roadshow: Local scenarios with practical applications.

The team from Our Land and Water National Science Challenge are on the road again, bringing to you a range of speakers to present practical science research for farmers. A special thanks to our event partners Otago South River Care and NZ Landcare Trust.

You are invited to join this informative day looking at the role of rural communities in the sustainable future of our primary sector and explore local scenarios with practical applications you can use in your everyday work. This event offers an opportunity to delve into independent research discoveries and engage in thought-provoking discussions. Leading independent researchers will each give a brief outlook of opportunities, some threats, and current (and future) signals in our markets.

Please RSVP below.

Discussion areas and speakers:

Options for Rural Investment – Carla Muller, PerrinAg
Farmers in Aotearoa are being prompted to diversify their farm systems to make sure their businesses are resilient to the changing climate and extreme weather events, to meet environmental expectations and regulations, and to diversify their income streams. This project investigated new and innovative financing solutions to help them overcome barriers to diversification by funding land use and capital-intensive land management changes solutions to help make this happen.

EU Farm to Fork – Tiffany Tompkins, OANZ
The European Union’s Green Deal, especially the Farm to Fork Strategy, presents challenges and opportunities for New Zealand exports into the EU, and into other regions that adopt similar standards in response. What opportunities exist and how are we placed to capitalise on these now and into the future?

Pasture for Humans – Chris Lewis, BakerAg
Technology is progressing that can extract protein from pasture, to create a plant protein food ingredient for human consumption. The opportunity to develop a new plant protein industry in Aotearoa depends upon on-farm viability, or there will be no incentive to make pasture available for producing protein foods. Working with three case study dairy farms, this project aimed to demonstrate how a farmer would integrate protein harvest into existing pastoral grazing systems and assess the potential economic consequences for both farm and region.

Urban-Rural Partnerships for Equal Change
Some farmers say they are tired of people with “no skin in the game” telling them to make difficult changes and sacrifices. This project tested the idea that greater change will happen, both on farm and off, when urban and rural businesses collaborate and support each other on the environmental journey. This project tested the idea that if farmers see urban groups making equal change to improve the environment, they would be more motivated to make change themselves.

Where to next for Catchment groups – Ed Challies, University of Canterbury
The health of our land, water and communities are closely connected. Tōitu te whenua, tōitu te tangata. (When land and water are sustained, the people are also sustained.) Catchment groups are proliferating around Aotearoa New Zealand as communities seek to tackle some of the difficult challenges facing water quality and river health. Given the magnitude of these challenges, and the public concern associated with them, there is a lot that government agencies, industry bodies and other entities could do (and are doing) to support catchment groups. A key question is: what types of support are needed?

Resources will be available and lunch provided. For catering purposes, please RSVP below or call Mark Woods on 027 656 0836 with any queries.

Available on the day will be a range of free guidance and tools to help farmers with freshwater management. Talk to the researchers as they show how they have worked alongside farmers and growers to achieve and identify common goals and opportunities.