April 13, 2017

Some Thoughts
Agriculture has had it tough over the last couple of months. Consumers seem to have forgotten that 95% of the food eaten in the world is produced by farmers/growers.
Do we need to start looking at our food chain in a different light?
Let us know what your thoughts are.

"Farmers making a living off the land but consumers live from the land." RR Burr 2017
Isn't it time we all got together?
We lost two of our agricultural icons/ambassadors recently - Fred Dagg and Murray Ball . Their humour and love of all things rural has entertained and united us all (rural and urban) for many years.Let's regain that unity and move forward together to an even better New Zealand.
A very interesting book to read - The Earth Heals Everything by Justine Glass, 1964
 
It doesn't cost any more to get it right than it does to get it wrong
I had a rather interesting conversation with one of our Sheep and Beef farmers recently.
"When I first started working with you guys (Qlabs) I was killing 17 kg lambs. Now I pick all my lambs to kill at 21.5 kgs............
read more....

The Nitrogen Spiral Strikes Again
Remember when applying Nitrogen - pasture plants don’t care where that Nitrogen comes from.
 
Recently I caught up with one of our clients. Their cows were producing at 1.3kg/Ms/day with milk ureas sitting around the early 30’s. But they looked over the fence at the neighbour’s grass and decided to apply chicken manure to boost their grass growth (working on the more grass must be better theory). I suggested they should be very observant and get ready to respond to their cows’ reaction once they started to graze the N boosted pastures........
The economics of the Nitrogen spiral go like this......
read more...
Organic Farming Can Feed The World (Think outside the square)
If anyone doubts that great production levels can be achieved by farming organically, then read on... 
In the first two years since starting with us production has increased by 25000 kg/MS. 
An organic dairy farm in the lower North Island is producing 1000 kg/ms/Ha - that's 400 kg/ms/cow....... 
The farm grows crops of lucerne and rape...................


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Upcoming Events

National Horticulture Field Day - June 29 2017
We will be attending the National Horticulture Field Day this year. We are indoors at Site 42. We'd love to see you there.This is a boxed text block. You can use it to draw attention to important content.