Opinion

Keeping commuting workers safe

Green party co-leader James Shaw received a black eye after he was allegedly attacked on his way to Parliament.

OPINION: Employers are responsible for keeping staff safe at work, but what on their way to work?

How dumb are we - really?

Gwyneth Paltrow takes part in a featured session during the South by Southwest Film Festival on Monday, March 11, 2019, ...

OPINION: We live in the information age, yet the Flat Earth Society and Gwyneth Paltrow are a real thing.

The psychology of cows

Research shows there is a lot more going on inside a cows mind than you may think.

OPINION: What makes a happy cow and how do we know it's really happy?

Democratising agriculture

Digitisation is the ultimate democratiser. It removes gatekeepers, 
Glen Herud says.

OPINION: Trade Me digitised trust and democritised the process of online trading, what sorts of diversity can be achieved if agriculture is open to anybody?

Big challenges for wine industry

As vineyards on both sides of the Tasman face an increase in fire outbreaks, smoke exposure is becoming a more regular ...

For those on the ground, the wine industry is very much at the mercy of climate change and adapting to it will be paramount, writes Neil Hodgson.

Fact is, we need rain

Riding through the hills on cloudless days might seem like a romantic notion, but all farmers wants is a good few days ...

Weather reporters like to put a cheery spin on what they think we want to hear. We don't need opinions, writes Joyce Wylie. We just need some rain.

Greenpeace ban could backfire

Clover accounts for between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of nitrogen inputs on New Zealand's pasture-based dairy farms.

OPINION: What Greenpeace really wants is to stop dairy farming, but banning nitrogen could actually mean more cows.

New tax no joy for farmers

Sir Michael Cullen presents the findings of the Tax Working Group.

OPINION: Other countries with a productive agricultural sector don't have these taxes so why should we?

Our objectification double-standard

Mari Vahanen was shocked at the response to her ad.

OPINION: Here's why being gross about women is worse than being sketchy about men.

No more excuses farmers

The people we need to protect are the future of our industry. Let's talk about safe practices, on our farms, over the ...

OPINION: Quad bikes are a factor in approximately 25 percent of fatalities on farm. Every single one of us needs to take responsibility.

Selling to farmers isn't easy

Most farmers already have low-tech solutions to their problems and these solutions have proved to be reliable and ...

OPINION: Farmers are famously hardworking and resilient. This also makes them the most difficult people on earth to make a profitable business out of.

Save 'industry' for the farm workers

In less than two decades nitrogen fertiliser and PKE, have become demonised in the eyes of the environmentally concerned ...

There's plenty of hard work combined with fert and feed inputs in farming, but that doesn't make the average cocky an industrial enterprise, argues Lyn Webster.

'Fully recyclable'? No, it's not

Our modern world is all about convenience and single-use packaging is so convenient.

OPINION: We all love convenience, and single-use packaging is so convenient.

Brexit: NZ farmers will tough it out

New Zealand butter on a Puerto Rico supermarket shelf.

ANALYSIS: Back in the 1970's New Zealand was in a similar situation to where Britain is now when the UK joined the EEC.

Farmers: Start advertising

Anybody who has had a good or bad experience with the dairy industry in the past 20 years has told their friends about it.

OPINION: The public must think farmers are good.

Honey, your dinner's in the lab video

Lab-grown meat may not appeal to everyone, but it's an important step in reducing the world's meat intake.

OPINION: The future of food isn't veganism, it's "meat" grown in laboratories.

Farmers must abide by burning rules

Burning the crop residue left behind from harvest is common practice in the industry, but farmers must follow all the ...

OPINION: Federated Farmers strongly advocates the use of fire permits and cannot help those who do not use one.

Fonterra's problem of being right

Glen Herud: "Fonterra HQ is filled with high achievers all preserving their careers, high pay packets and self-worth."

OPINION: Fonterra needs people who will start a ruckus.

Are farmers just whingers?

The ups and downs of farming make the news, but farmers have it far from easy, even in this day of uber-technology and ...

OPINION: A bunch of whingers, or hard done by? It's sometimes hard for farmers to get it right.

Summer senses

The sounds of summer include dogs yapping and freshly weaned lambs at Joyce Wyllie's farm at Kaihoka.

How different city summer sounds are compared with the noises our rural ears enjoy, writes Joyce Wyllie.

Time for a reckoning

If you cannot stand the thought of what it takes to get, for example two litres of milk or a roast of lamb to your table ...

OPINION: Have we lost touch with the harsh realities that keep us fed and watered?

Meat meals an iron-clad rule

With fond memories of a family roast Tom O'Connor's line in the sand is not giving up meat in 2019.

Sure it's easy to over-indulge at this time of year, but Tom O'Connor is more wary of the creep of anaemia if he gives up his roast.

Oh, what a knight.

Sir Tim.

OPINION: Sir Tim? It has a ring - or is it a ding? - to it.

Super flyer or carbon guzzler?

Fueling up. Planes generate around 3 per cent of global carbon emissions. They are also part of the reason that richer ...

OPINION: Is Air New Zealand's 639,000km super flyer a super carbon consumer?

Held hostage by extremists video

A melting iceberg breaks from the edge of the Greenland ice sheet.

OPINION: James Shaw wants to use the pretext of addressing carbon emissions to achieve his more brutal social agenda.

'No effluent excuses'

The positive face of dairying - Donna McKinley, a winner of the Dairy Trainee award at the Dairy Industry Awards's ...

DairyNZ chairman Jim van der Poel has a message for farmers who are letting down the side.

The facts about nitrogen in horticulture

Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman says the industry is talking to the Government about the best ways ...

OPINION: The primary industries are working together to address both the real and perceived impacts of food production on the environment.

Climate problem bigger than fertiliser stuff nation video

In New Zealand, synthetic nitrogen fertiliser is used to help the grass grow.

OPINION: Calling synthetic nitrogen fertiliser a “truly gross, climate killing chemical” won't help us confront climate change.

Single solution to multiple problems

Ecologist Mike Joy says a reduction in cow numbers would have multiple benefits including reducing the loss of nutrients ...

OPINION: A reduction in farming intensity is the perfect example of a single solution to multiple problems.

Where have all the sheep gone? video

These days coarse wool on meat-producing sheep is hardly more than a  nuisance.

New Zealand's sheep population peaked at 70 million. Now there's less than 28 million.

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