Kellogg Programme Reports

Meeting the requirements of compliance is an area that farmers struggle with. They are great at working the land and with animals and get frustrated at having to slow down to complete what is sometimes seen as needless paper work. Compliance in the agricultural sector is only going to increase and become more complex. Local … Read more

If you talk to any vet out there, I can almost guarantee it wasn’t an offhand decision in their final year of high school that took them to vet school. The dream would have taken place years before. If you ask any vet, there will be a moment in their childhood; an experience or situation, … Read more

The dairy industry has for a long time been challenged to recruit sufficient people to fill vacancies and to meet the needs created by natural attrition. Generation Z (Gen Z) are people born after 1995. The relevance being that Gen Z are aged up to approximately 20 years (as at 2017) and are starting to … Read more

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift” Kasanoff (2017). Although this might be a paraphrase of Albert Einstein’s work, it is a quote that has spread all across the world and is a … Read more

During the last two decades (1995 to 2015) the New Zealand dairy industry has undergone significant growth. Nationally, cow numbers have increased 70% from 2.9 to 5 million, the area in dairy has increased 45% from 1.2 to 1.75 million hectares and milk production has increased 129% from 8.1 billion to 18.6 billion milksolids (DairyNZ … Read more

Following the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) and a fatality on a kiwifruit orchard in 2016, the New Zealand Kiwifruit industry has begun a journey on improving health and safety practices on orchard. There has recently been a proliferation of software solutions to support on-orchard health and safety. This … Read more

This case study looks at the changes seen over the first eight years post conversion to organic viticulture and covers the first 150 hectares of converted vineyard area on a vineyard in Marlborough, New Zealand. The motivation behind this case study has come wanting to know what changes have happened on the vineyard in question … Read more

This report was written with the aim of exploring how other successful businesses within the Primary Industry can gain a higher premium on their products to give a competitive advantage and exclusive brand positioning. I wanted to see if there are any lessons that can be learnt and adopted by Zespri and Growers to gain … Read more

Modern work enabled by the aforementioned advancements, particularly the rate of digital technology change, is becoming increasingly accessible around the clock, which results in a progressively blurred line between work life and home life, with the concept of a work life balance under significant challenge. This challenge is exacerbated when farming households are engaged in pluriactivity. Pluriactivity is the situation when family members invest time off-farm, which is not a temporary situation responding to changed circumstance or shock, but rather a permanent and accepted feature of farming societies globally, that is driven by a range of diverse factors, including household, farm and spatial drivers.

By the year 2020, over $1.6 billion of New Zealand taxpayer money will be invested in science and innovation per annum. What share will Primary Industries have of this investment?  “With the coming of the fourth industrial revolution – fundamental change to our daily personal and professional lives from the combination of physical, digital and … Read more

This report was aimed at discussing and presenting the ideas surrounding the future of the co-operative business structure in rural New Zealand. This was achieved through a review of relevant literature and surveying key co-operative members and employees to gather their opinions on how they saw the co-operative structures relevance today and in the future.  … Read more

Is now the time for bovine dominance in the milk market to be challenged? There are variable and questionable milk alternatives more readily available both locally and abroad and our New Zealand sheep dairy history would suggest the current spike in popularity will be short-lived. I disagree. In my opinion New Zealand is the ideal … Read more

My project has investigated some of the current beef industry quality assurance (QA) programs which provide evidence based marketing tools to the livestock industry. The case studies have allowed me to identify key aspects of these programs which would be useful to utilize when designing a holistic QA program for the beef industry.  The key … Read more

New Zealand’s animal genetics industry started when two sheep were imported, and they both died within four days, (NZ Rural Press Ltd, 2007). Since then, with the expertise of passionate breeders, scientists, farmers and advisers it is has significantly expanded and will continue to do so. By 2021, animal genetics is expected to be a … Read more

Throughout its short history, the New Zealand Wagyu Industry (NZWI) which was established in the early 1990’s with the introduction of cattle from Australia and the United States (US) via original parents in Japan has been struggling to grow.  This is partly due but is not limited to the long time frames required to breed … Read more

Central Otago is a region where farming is predominantly sheep and beef. The profitability of these farms varies, and in the last few years lamb prices have not helped this. Nitrogen use has the potential to help farmers improve production and profitability, but the use of it also varies a lot from farm to farm … Read more

The New Zealand Kiwifruit industry has a unique background and history; from 1928 when Hayward Wright developed the “Hayward” variety, to our first exports to England in 1952. Rapid expansion in the 1970’s, followed a crisis in the mid to late 1980’s as a result of large crop volumes beyond market demand. In 1997, Zespri … Read more

Environment protection to some degree is something that every sheep and beef farmer in the country is going to have to either deal with currently, or sometime in the near future. The degree of environmental protection will depend on the regions location and also the issues relevant to every individual farm, but it would be … Read more

Water for New Zealand has been described as a ‘Wicked Problem’.  This is a term that has been used to relate the degree of social and ecological complexity involved. It also describes how different world views on such problems can shape both the definition and the solution. This is not always positive or balanced. For … Read more