2026 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholarship. Apply by 17 August 2025. Read More...

Apply for 2026 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholarship by 17 August 2025. More details...

Dairy

Bartlett, Ellen

The purpose of this report is to look at whether the amount of money spent by Fonterra on research and development is enough. Currently Fonterra spend around 1% of turn over on research and development. The body of the report looks at where this money is spent and whether more would be advantageous. Shareholders councillors … Read more

Salvesen, Michael I. C.

Pastoral Farmers in New Zealand are renowned for their expertise and ability to grow grass and to convert that to meat and milk more efficiently than anyone else. This may well be the case although how near that is to the economic optimum is what this project aims to find out. The perception is that … Read more

Mandi McLeod

The term ‘succession’ is usually used in the narrowest sense of asset transfer between generations with little attention paid to management succession in the case of a (family) farm business or succession of board members at a board and governance level. With agriculture contributing approximately 15% of GDP, New Zealand’s aging agricultural population is of … Read more

Wills, Grant

What is our dairy pasture really worth? Or, more importantly, what are we prepared to pay for the land that it grows on? Through this report, seven farm performance parameters have been compared with the value offarm sales in the Matamata-Piako district. The two physical parameters, pasture production, and milksolids production, have been compared with … Read more

Walter John, B

Synlait has an established pasture monitoring system across all the Synlait dairy farms. The objective is to provide accurate, consistent and comparable measurements that can be used for management decisions, including pasture allocation, surplus identification and regrassing options. The Synlait pasture monitoring service has provided a vast amount of data on pasture growth rate and … Read more

van Beek, G

Dairy farmers take feed and convert that to milk and other farm products which are converted, typically in New Zealand by member co-operatives into marketable products for sale. The net revenue is distributed back to members through various payment models with the aim of providing clear market signals as to the value of their milk. … Read more

Les Keeper

For as long as I can remember, the catch cry of New Zealand agricultural producers has been to “add value”.  Governments and business circles have pointed the stick at the agricultural sector demanding we step up and add value to our commodity products by further processing and marketing before we on-sell that produce. Dairy companies … Read more

Kyte Richard, J

I believe the New Zealand dairy industry is being compromised by understaffing on farms, especially larger units of 600 cows or more. This has become a significantly greater problem in the last 10 years and specifically in the South Island with larger farm sizes and cow numbers rapidly increasing. As the dairy industry grows to … Read more

van Polanen, J

In recent years the van Polanen farm has intensified the grass based dairy operation which is the core activity of their farming business and it became necessary to use the limited water resource more efficiently. New technologies and practices in spray irrigation prompted an investigation into the economics of changing from border-dyke irrigation to spray … Read more

Jennifer McDonald

Rising land values in New Zealand's dairy industry have made traditional farm ownership increasingly unattainable, creating a critical gap between employee career expectations and industry realities that now threatens workforce retention and long-term sustainability.

Sharpin Richard

The Clydevale Clinton Quality Employers Group has been set up to specifically meet the needs of our 20 plus dairy farmer members. In setting up the processes and procedures for the group we have endeavoured to meet critical employment standards in areas of our industry that often create problems. This has included: – Capping hours … Read more

McGill Paul, B

Productivity increases by farms over the past twenty years have been large. Farmers are always looking for ways to increase output, especially in the last ten years in a period of high market returns for farm products. Productivity increases have been partly achieved through intensification. Intensification of farming systems over the last ten years has … Read more

Scrimgeour John, R

Getting cows in calf has always been a concern for dairy farmers. The term “close to profit” describing a cow as being close to calving and earning an income sums up the need to get cows “in-calf”. Maximising the number of cows in calf or pregnant also maximises farmers opportunity to cull cows for other … Read more

Maughan Greg

The New Zealand Dairy Industry has been the envy of the world for decades for its ability to allow young people the opportunity to undertake a career path which progresses to farm ownership. So much so that it is almost a tradition that people move on to or have as their ultimate goal ‘farm ownership’. … Read more

McLeod, Mandi

The New Zealand Dairy industry is committed to developing the knowledge and skills of its farmers by investing time, energy and money into training activities. What is uncertain is how effective this training is in terms of learning. Fleming and Bonwell (1980) believe that the effectiveness of training is largely determined by the learning styles … Read more

Morris Alan

This report identifies the opportunity for dairy farm development work in China, which lead to the formation of the company Agricultural Developments International Ltd (ADiL’s). The report summarises the challenges and influences effecting ADiL in its quest to find a suitable starting point for agriculture development in China. The report covers a number of the … Read more

Moynihan, Pete

With the popularisation of equity partnerships during the last 15 years in the dairy industry, it was decided that a review of what characterises success and lack of success within equity partnerships would be useful. This would enable recommendations to be put to existing and prospective investors in equity partnerships. This is a small “snapshot” … Read more

Andrew Watters

The quality of our NZ economy depends on our ability to acquire, protect, translate, combine and apply knowledge.  This knowledge is required to solve today’s problems and to prepare the ground for solving tomorrow’s.  Without new knowledge, and new combinations of knowledge, there will be no innovation.  And without innovation, NZ will struggle to keep … Read more

Clayton Greene Campbell

Every company has a reputation. Everyone you meet will form an opinion about your company, even if they have not done business with you yet. The challenge is to manage your reputation so that the opinion that people have of you is positive. This is what creates a brand. Branding will not have merit if … Read more

Woods Gail

The issues surrounding retention and training of staff in the dairy industry have become a ‘catch cry’ over the last five years as the industry expands and skill shortages intensify. “Are we achieving the results we need to help grow the industry and are the training methods we are currently using meeting the needs of … Read more

Gasquoine David, J

The co-operative business model has been in existence since 1844. It is estimated that today, at least 50% of the world’s population is, in some way, affected by co-operative activity. Most of this activity is in the agricultural sector where groups of farmers have formed co-operatives. This provides them with some collective strength and security … Read more

Murray King

The wide degree of anticipation for the completion of this report by many people suggests to me that the problems of getting the job done whilst maintaining harmonious employment relationships are greater than first envisaged. The human (social) component of triple bottom line reporting has only recently become acknowledged as part of sustainable business management. … Read more

Stevenson Geoff, K

The aim of this project is to create discussion, about the issue’s confronting the people who are in management positions on the large dairy units in Canterbury. Once they have reached this position what is the next step for them. These are real issues that are facing these people and they will have ramifications on … Read more

Irene Fowler (Nolan)

Research exploring what drives urban professionals to successfully transition into dairy farming and identifying attributes that help future career changers.