Planting

• Conventional treatment: ploughed, disced x 2, power-harrowed, peas drilled, rolled
• Hybrid treatment: peas direct drilled, rolled
• Regenerative treatment: not planted in peas

Winter cover crops in both the Conventional and Hybrid treatments were sprayed out early, and the soil stayed wet. The Conventional treatment was encouraged to dry by cultivating to ‘open up’ the soil. The Hybrid, which was not cultivated, remained very wet, making the soil more vulnerable to compaction at planting. The soil was wet enough to leave defined drill lines, and in some places open slots.

We decided not to plant the Regen treatment in early peas. We wanted to avoid driving on wet soil with heavy machinery, minimising compaction, and retained the soil in a ‘restorative phase’ for longer, ahead of planting beans in late December.

Crop Monitoring

The impact of planting into wet soil in the Hybrid treatment was seen almost immediately. Establishment was slower, and the plant population significantly lower than the Conventional treatment.

We saw similar trends in canopy cover percentage, with the Hybrid treatment lower than the Conventional one. The Regenerative cover crop was mulched on the 1st of October to stop the radish component of the cover crop mix from flowering. The residue was later disced in to mix soil with the residue and speed up breakdown. That was not been sufficient to kill the oats in the multispecies cover crop, and the regrowth required ongoing management.

Both the Conventional and Hybrid treatments had one post-emergence herbicide application (Bruno + Quantum). No pre-emergence herbicide was applied due to lack of forecast rain early in the season.

The dry weather through November brought forward our harvesting date. A fungicide application was recommended, but we were too close to the 14 day pre-harvest interval so none was applied. Disease pressure was low so we had few issues.

The dry spring meant the irrigator has been consistently running. Between planting on the 3rd of September and harvest on the 27th November we received 46.7mm of rainfall. The irrigator made six passes and applied approximately 96mm of irrigation.

Harvest took place on the 26th of November, read more in our harvest article!

The post 2024 McCains Pea Production appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

Ahead of the machine harvest, in each plot we hand harvested all of the pea vines from four 2 x 1m2 subplots. The plants were taken to the McCains mini-viner in Waipawa where the peas were separated from the pods and the vine, and weighed to determine yield.

A subsample of the peas was used to determine the Tenderness Rating (TR). TR is a key factor in determining the price paid for process peas. Generally, a higher price is paid for lower TR peas, as the yield is typically lower. Subsamples were also collected for laboratory analysis, and for drying to determine dry matter content.

Some results!

We are still processing samples and awaiting laboratory results, however we can share the following.

Our Conventional treatment on average produced a paid weight of 5.74 T/ha, and the Hybrid treatment 4.69 T/ha. This is not unsurprising considering the slow start the peas in the Hybrid treatment had (see previous post).

The average Tenderness Rating (TR) for the Conventional treatment was 104, and the Hybrid slightly lower at 96. This means that the Hybrid yielded a higher price per ton than the Conventional.

At this stage, the estimate of income received from the peas is approximately $4290.20 for the Conventional treatment and $3797.50 for the Hybrid. We are still finalising input costs, and will report on margins later in the year. The Hybrid treatment did have a lower cost of production than the Conventional, so it will be interesting to see final gross margins.

Next Steps

We are due to plant our beans on the 28th of December. We have completed our post-harvest operations, which has included baling the vine on the Conventional treatment followed by disc ripping. The Hybrid was disc ripped to incorporate the vine, with the aim of retaining nutrients, particularly nitrogen. The Regen treatment was also disc ripped to mechanically kill the oats which had regrown.

The aim of disc ripping is to attend to any compaction, bury any residues, and level the surface as much as possible ahead of planting beans.

A big thanks!

As always, we want to thank our dedicated operations advisory team for their input into our pea crop.

This includes Mike Flynn, Ben Prebble, Allan Machakaire, Scott Marillier and Renee (McCain Foods), Bruce Mackay (Kraft-Heinz Wattie’s), Gareth Holder (Redloh), Scott Lawson (True Earth), Phil Schofield (Reset Regenerate), Shelley Bath (Horticentre) and Mike Kettle (Mike Kettle Contracting). We would also like to thank Jonny Wilson for completing the disc ripping, and navigating our small plots with very long equipment!

The post 2024 Pea Harvest Results appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

Two suggested approaches for increasing biodiversity caught our attention. Over the last six months, we have been exploring their implementation at the MicroFarm. We are enormously grateful to Olivia Prouse for supporting our biodiversity journey so far. We are also grateful to Richard Mills from Summerfruit NZ for leading the way in Hawke’s Bay, and showing us the importance of just giving something a go! We also extend our gratitude to other growers engaging in this initiative, who have been sharing their experiences.

Mobile Insectaries

Mobile insectaries (moveable pods) aim to provide a source of shelter, nectar, alternative hosts and pollen (SNAP) for beneficial insects. The concentrated areas of SNAP support natural enemies, which can aid in pest control in vegetable crops. The moveable pods can be moved in and out of crops easily during the year.

Following the detailed ‘how to’ guide provided by ALT, with additional support from Olivia Prouse for plant selection, we built four moveable pods. Each pod has native five plants, all selected to flower at different times of the year. The species selected were mainly plants that had small flowers to provide habitat to small predatory wasps and other small insects which cannot feed on large flowers like commonly grown manuka.

We have been monitoring the pods to see what is flowering each month. While there is some maintenance required for weeding and watering, all plants survived the winter and are thriving this spring. We are excited to have species like Pimelea mimosa, which is a native daphne, naturally found only on Te Mata peak, and to have two species of Muehlenbeckia, which provides a food source for NZ native copper butterfly.

Annual Flower Strips

The aim adding annual flowering strips to a farm is to enhance above ground diversity. Again, this increases the diversity of natural pest insect enemies, providing additional pest control.

At the MicroFarm, we had two specific areas that made for good candidates for annual planting strips. The first is along our driveway, an area which is normally sprayed year-round for weeds. The second is under the irrigator guide cable, another area that gets sprayed, particularly in the spring and summer when the irrigator is running.

Using the ‘how to’ guide from ALT, we have planted a variety of annual flowers in these areas to see what might be suitable. In late September, we planted nine 10 m long plots of annual flowers, each with different combinations of species planted. The rest will planted by early December. We have been monitoring what is growing and what is flowering, and are excited to see insects present and a range of different colored flowers along the driveway.

What’s next?

We continue to monitor the moveable pods and annual flowering strips. We hope that our late plantings will persist through the summer and autumn. While not formally part of our main Carbon Positive project, it is a nice supplementary demonstration. We hope to showcase the ALT guides and provide some regional information about what may be suitable to grow (annuals and perennials) here in Hawke’s Bay. Read more about our journey in the latest A Lighter Touch newsletter here!

The post Biodiversity at the MicroFarm appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

The current approach to assessing earthworms is through field visual assessments, which can be labour intensive and requires expert knowledge in identifying species. The new test provides a convenient and efficient alternative for earthworm testing.

The soil test has been calibrated for 7.5 cm soil depth in pastoral settings, rather than the 15 cm depth which is the standard depth for horticultural and arable soil tests.

We have been working with Dr Nicole Schon at AgResearch, who helped to develop the test, and Hill Laboratories to better understand how the test might be relevant within a cropping context.

This month, we completed our six-monthly Visual Soil Assessments in the Carbon Positive plots. As part of this process we sent all earthworms found to Nicole for identification, and soil samples to Hills to test for A. caliginosa eDNA. We hope that these samples will help to strengthen the understanding of the soil test taken to 15 cm depth.

Check out Alex and Nicole’s article in the latest NZ Grower magazine (pg. 48-50) for more discussion, or the Hills technical note for more details.

The post Earthworm eDNA at the MicroFarm appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

In the above picture, you can see our McCain Foods pea crop planted into cultivated (Conventional treatment) soil on the left, and into sprayed our mixed cover crop (Hybrid treatment) in the centre. The golden patch is mixed cover crop residue in the Regenerative treatment plot that was mulched on 1 October. Some of the oats, tillage radish and other species remain alive under the mulch.

To completely terminate the cover prior to planting green beans in December, the Operations Advisory Group has decided to run disks over the plots to mix soil into the mulched residue to hasten its breakdown. They recommend spraying urea and a digester on to the residue first, to support the microbe population increase needed to chew through about 11 t/ha of biomass dry matter.

One of our big unknowns, is whether we can terminate the cover crops using a roller-crimper. Our literature and phone-calls-to-farmers research suggest timing is absolutely critical, and it is unlikely multiple species will be just right on the same day. We found for example, that the tillage radish was setting seed while the oats were not sufficiently mature for crushing. In our Regenerative treatment plots, we decided to mulch the five-species mix to avoid adding a gazillion radish seeds to our already well-stocked seed-bank.

We have also started termination programmes in the extra cover crops we planted. One crop is the same five-species mix as in the Carbon Positive Regenerative and Hybrid plots. Another is rye corn, one has straight tic beans, and one has tic beans and rye corn.

These crops were planted so we can try things without affecting the Carbon Positive plots. We started crushing strips with a roller-crimper on 10 October and will do more strips over the next few weeks. We are also considering mulching some and spraying any regrowth.

The images below show the bruised bars in the cover crops after roller-crimping. The theory is that once plants reach physiological maturity and flowering, they will not continue new vegetative growth if damaged. Bruising is thought better than cutting.

Thanks to TRS in Hastings for providing the tractor and crimper for these trials. We will be demonstrating it working at our Field Walk on Tuesday 15 October at the LandWISE MicroFarm. Everyone is welcome – but please register for free.

This work is being completed as part of the MPI Funded Carbon Positive project, a joint programme with the Hawke’s Bay Future Farming Trust. We a grateful for our industry sponsors and everyone who contributes through advisory groups, being tolerant contractors, and in many small ways!

The post Cover Crop Update appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

We think it is important that our LandWISE membership is up to date on regulations and are pleased to include this post on our website and in our newsletter. Many farm dams are excluded from the new regulations, but there are many that are covered. Farmers sometimes make big ponds, and we are aware of a few “home-builds” that were actually large dams with significant safety significance! Have a look and check your backyard (and the regulations) if you think you might be included.

Dam Safety Regulations are in force

The Building (Dam Safety) Regulations 2022 commenced on 13 May 2024.

The regulations have been made to improve the resilience and maintenance of Aotearoa New Zealand’s dams, protecting people, property and the environment from the potential impacts of dam failures.

Only classifiable dams are impacted by the regulations. Dams are classifiable if they are 4 or more metres in height and store 20,000 or more cubic metres volume of water, or other fluid.

Background to the Regulations
The Regulations were made by the Government in May 2022 and provide a nationally consistent approach to dam safety. Having a dam safety framework brings Aotearoa New Zealand in line with most other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Since May 2022, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has been working with industry groups and regional authorities to ensure dam owners are aware of the Regulations and provide them with information and resources to support them to meet their responsibilities when the Regulations came into effect.

What do the Regulations mean for you?
If you are the owner of a water retention structure, firstly you need to determine if your structure meets the definition of a classifiable dam (that is, if it meets the height and volume thresholds).

• If you determine that your dam is classifiable, you will then need to determine your dam’s potential impact classification (PIC). If you do not have a classifiable dam, no further action is required under these Regulations.
• Once the PIC has been determined, you will need to then have the PIC audited and certified by a Recognised Engineer, who will work with the dam owner to complete a dam classification certificate.
• Dam classification certificates need to be submitted to the relevant regional authority.
• Owners of dams with a medium or high PIC have further actions they need to take.
• The only additional requirement for owners of dams with a low PIC is to review their dam’s PIC within five years of the regional authority approving it.
• If you own a dam and fail to meet your responsibilities under the law (the Building Act 2004 Regulations), then you may be liable for a fine.

Resources to help you
You can read more about the definitions, regulations, and find resources to support you, on MBIE’s Building Performance website: www.building.govt.nz/managing-buildings/dam-safety/

Included in these resources is the Measuring and calculating the height and volume of agricultural dams resource. This is designed to help horticultural or agricultural dam owners calculate the volume of their dam and understand if they are impacted by the Regulations.

MBIE has also published another resource, the Potential Impact Classification checklist, which is a checklist to support dam owners to identify and collate information for a PIC assessment.

The post New Dam Safety Regulations appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

Pea Planting

The Conventional treatment, which was planted in annual ryegrass, was sprayed out one month ahead of planting, then ploughed, disced (x2) and power harrowed in preparation for planting peas. The Hybrid treatment, which was planted in a diverse mix of mainly black oats, tillage radish and vetch, was sprayed out one month ahead of planting, with the intention of letting the cover crop rot down and peas were direct drilled. The Regenerative treatment was not be planted in peas, and instead left in a restorative phase for an extended period, whereby some of the intensity is reduced from this system.

We ran into some roadblocks in the Hybrid. As the consequence of spraying out early was that there was no evapotranspiration from the crop, so the soil was slow to dry after rain. We didn’t want to cultivate this treatment, therefore didn’t have the option to speed up drying through ‘opening’ the soil. In our ‘dry runs’ with the planter, a distinct slot was created, which would mean the soil to seed contact would not be good. It would also create a nice little home for slugs. To keep with our production plan, we delayed our planting date to get a bit more drying time, so the soil was dry enough for some tilth to be created.

Additional seed treatment

The Hybrid seed was treated with Trichoderma, based on promising trial results from Wattie’s in Canterbury. This was added to the seed, on top of the standard McCain seed treatment. The Hybrid was drilled through the standing sprayed out cover crop, so the residue was anchored, and then mulched after planting. The main concern with leaving the cover crop standing is that some of the tillage radishes had popped out of the ground. If left standing, they could be picked up by the harvester and end up at the factory.

Pūkeko as far as the eye can see

In the days after the peas started to emerge, we found the treatments overrun with pest animals – pūkeko, rabbits, sparrows and pigeons. This is perhaps to be expected, however as each plot is only 0.1ha, every plant is precious! We actively managed these pests to minimise the damage. As a result, we have seen a few more hawks around, which is hopefully deterring some of the unwanted bird life.

Soil Temperature

Soil temperature in the planting line was recorded every 15 minutes for three weeks from planting. using iButton microloggers. Soil temperature in the Conventional treatment (cultivated/bare soil) was consistently higher than the Hybrid (direct drilled/mulched).

Pea emergence

Plant emergence has been monitored since the 24th of September. Four x 1m² quadrats are counted in each plot, each day to monitor the rate of emergence. Plants are counted when the first leaves have unfurled/flattened. The Conventional treatment population is higher and more uniform than the Hybrid, which has been slower to emerge. This is likely to be related to lower soil temperature and soil conditions at planting.

Upcoming field walk

Our next field walk will be at 1pm on the 15th of October. Come along and join the conversation! Register here!

The post September 2024 at the MicroFarm appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

What to plant?

First off, what should we plant? I don’t think we have yet got our cover crop mixes quite right. This year, our hybrid and regen treatments were planted in a diverse mix of 7 species (black oats, tillage radish, vetch, buckwheat, sunflowers, crimson clover and Persian clover). This was to get lots of plant diversity over the winter.

A frost in May killed the buckwheat and sunflowers, which meant they weren’t present over the winter. We planted tillage radish as it is supposed to be the “crowbar of the soil” and will break through tillage pans. Unfortunately, our radishes knew better, hit the pan and, in some areas, popped themselves 10cm out of the ground. This is potentially an issue for both the hybrid and the regen treatments, as chunks of radish could be picked up by the harvester and end up at the factory which may be a problem for product contamination.

Additionally, the radish started to flower and was beginning to set seed, so radish if unmanaged, could have become be a new weed species for us.

In this conversation, there is the question of how much plant diversity do we need? Some of the species we are using, might be okay in a pastoral grazing scenario, but could be hard to manage in a cropping system and therefore become a weed for us. In the systems we are looking at, are we able to select fewer plants, that provide functional diversity, without adding added complexity of to the management of the cover crop?

Another consideration is disease carry over. We intentionally avoided planting tic beans this year, as they could carry unwanted diseases into the following legume crops. Tic beans may be an option ahead of other crops.

Do we graze?

One of the five regenerative principles is to integrate livestock, which we have not yet done in our Regen treatment. However we have grazed our Conventional treatment, which might seem a bit backwards. It is common for Heretaunga Plains growers to plant an annual ryegrass over the winter and graze it with lambs, so we are including sheep in our Conventional treatment.

In the last two years, we wanted to use the cover crop as a mulch on the surface for our main crop to keep the soil surface covered, another of our regenerative principles. If we have a mulch on the soil surface, we hope it will significantly reduce the need for herbicides. To do this effectively, we need to grow a lot of biomass, and therefore don’t want to have sheep or cattle grazing it. We don’t really have a long enough winter growing season to do both. This is where we find tension between some of the regen principles when applied to an annual cropping system. We might yet include livestock; however, we aren’t sure what this will look like in practice.

In addition, lambs can do considerable soil damage over the winter. The photos below show the difference between grazing for a couple of weeks in dry conditions and grazing over a wet weekend this winter.

When to terminate?

Ahead of the tomato planting last year, we had a cover crop of oats, vetch and lupins in the Regen treatment. You may remember that we planned to use a modified tomato planter, which transplants seedlings directly into a mulched cover crop, eliminating the need for both cultivation and herbicides. Just before planting, we met two problems with this plan.

The first issue was that the cover crop was still actively growing and sucking moisture out of the soil, so the soil was very dry in the regen treatment. This led to large, blocky clumps of soil forming in the top 10cm of the profile. The second issue was that the timing of maturity wasn’t right for mulching and killing the oats. In a test area of cover crop, we found the oats regrow, and we had very limited herbicide options to deal with this. It might have worked if we had waited a couple of weeks, however we were working with a factory schedule and had a planting date that wasn’t very flexible.

We want to apply lessons from that experience this year. We are already seeing low soil moisture levels and low nitrate levels in the Regen treatment. To manage the amount of biomass we have grown, and stop the flowering radish from seeding, the cover crop was mulched on the 1st of October. We expect the mulching will not kill the oats, and that we will need to manage regrowth.

How to terminate?

We planted a winter cover crop, it has grown all winter, so what next? Our Operations Advisory Group is having an ongoing discussion on how we terminate it in our Regen treatment. The initial plan was to use a roller crimper, but the consensus is that this is probably not quite the right tool for the job. We have since mulched the cover crop, but we will need another action to terminate it (oats weren’t mature enough). We have two options; we either spray out the oat regrowth or we cultivate to bury the residue.

This is an important conversation for us, as the use of glyphosate is not widely accepted by the Regenerative community. But our discussions with no-till or minimum tillage growers, and some of the Canterbury regenerative croppers, show it is an important tool for successfully reducing or eliminating cultivation. Most of the literature indicates that cultivating is the number one thing to avoid if we want to increase soil carbon, which is the main metric in this trial.

Weed management is a key consideration in beans as there are few herbicide options. If the crop is too weedy it won’t be harvested. If we cultivate, we will have to manage weeds through a suite of other herbicides that have the potential to as harmful as, or worse than glyphosate when compared using the Environmental Impact Quotient.

How do we best minimise soil disturbance? Both cultivation and herbicide use fall into the category of soil disturbance. The question for our operations group comes down to what is the ‘lesser of two evils’- glyphosate or cultivation?

More questions than answers!

A key lesson from the last two years, is that cover crops are important. We have also found that cover crop management is quite complex. There are a lot of questions we need to ask ourselves:

The post Lessons from two years of winter cover crops appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

In June this year, I was chosen for one of two teams attending the 2024 International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA) Case Study Competition and Conference in Almeria, Spain. The theme of the conference was Food Security Through Innovation & Sustainability. We were then invited to attend a weeklong food and agri-innovation tour to Bologna, Cologne and then through the Netherlands.

I am lucky to have been in a team with four clever individuals from across the New Zealand Agri-Food sector. Our team included Dan from Silver Fern Farms in Dunedin, Fatima from ANZ in Auckland, Braydon from Perrin Ag in Rotorua, and Katie from Auckland University. We brought a diverse range of skills to our case study analysis, as well as a diverse range of opinions and perspectives on agriculture.

We were incredibly excited to learn that we won first place in our division, with the other New Zealand team coming in second place. Not bad for a little country at the bottom of the world!

While travelling together after the conference we were able to explore food provenance and food culture in Bologna, agricultural research and development in Cologne, and agricultural and horticultural innovation in the Netherlands. We will all be spending the next few months digesting what we have seen, discussed and learnt, and how our experience links to food production back here in New Zealand.

Many thanks to LandWISE (Dan & Phillipa) for allowing me the time away to learn, grow and explore the agri-food sector at a global level.

Applications are open!

Applications are open for the 2024 STAMP intake so if you have talented young people in your business (under 27 at the time of application), encourage them to apply! Click here for more information. Applications close 31st Aug 2024.

The post STAMP Field Trip – IFAMA 2024 appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.

Almería – a sea of greenhouses

At the bottom of Spain on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, you’ll find Almería. Almería is a city and municipality of Andalusia, and is located in the desert, receiving only 200 mm of rain per year. Despite this, the region is a hub of horticultural production, with 32,200 ha of greenhouses spread across the landscape (3.7% of the total area of the province), as well as around 30,000 of open-air production.

There are 12,500 farms with undercover production which generate more than 110,000 jobs. There are many small growers who are represented by grower co-operatives. In fact, there are enough co-operatives that secondary co-operatives exists which are ‘co-operatives of co-operatives’, for example Unica, which represents 15 co-operatives. The industry prides itself on being leaders in tech transfer to growers of all sizes, and strives for shared wealth creation, and keeping small farmers in business.

The annual turnover in the region is €4.4 billion, plus an additional €1.5 billion from the auxiliary industries including nurseries, R&D centers and suppliers (approx. €6 billion total per year). Given the region’s warm location, growers can achieve year-round production. The main crops grown are eggplants, zucchini, cucumber, tomato, pepper, melon, watermelon and lettuce. In total, 3.7 million tons of fruit and vegetables are produced each year. The first greenhouse was built in 1963 and since then has taken the province from one of the poorest in Andalusia to one of the wealthiest, now ranking above average in Spain.

In 2007 a program was started to implement biological controls in horticultural crops to produce residue free crops. In 2023, Almería had the largest area in the world using biological controls in vegetables, totaling 26,800ha.

Challenges

There are significant challenges to producing food in such an intensive way, and there has been much criticism of the region’s intensive production methods and the impact on the environment.

Water is unsurprisingly a key issue in a desert. Historically water has been extracted from groundwater, depleting underground aquifers. In recent years, desalination plants have been built to provide fresh water through reverse osmosis for both human consumption and irrigation, although water is still having to be extracted from the ground to meet demand.

Plastic use is also a challenge, with the plastic on the greenhouses being replaced by growers every 3 years, however the industry reports that 100% of the plastic is recycled.

The source of the region’s labour supply has faced criticism in recent years, in relation to the exploitation of migrant workers working in the greenhouses.

Netherlands- home of the modern glasshouse

As part of our trip, we travelled through The Netherlands, where we had the opportunity to visit Van der Harg in Bemmel. They grow and pack capsicums/bell pepper in their 8.6 ha of glasshouses. They are also experimenting with growing eggplants. The design of the Dutch glasshouse originated in Den Hague, and there are 10,000 ha of glasshouses in The Netherlands today, which largely grow bell pepper, eggplant, tomato and cucumbers.

The seedlings are grown at an independent nursery and planted into the glasshouse in November. The first fruit is harvested in February. Production lasts until October when the plants are pulled out and the greenhouse is prepared for the next crop. Interestingly, the crop is grown with few to no sprays, however the crop cannot be classified as organic as it is not grown directly in the soil. The plants are grown in ‘cultivation gutters’, where there are understory plantings which are used for pest control, and climate control.

The glasshouse is located in an Agropark, NextGarden, which allows participating growers to reduce their costs by ‘industrial symbiosis’; sharing resources and infrastructure. This includes collective power generation and a biodigester. By-products of the biodigester are captured (heat and CO2) and used by the glasshouses. There is also collective water harvesting systems that delivers clean rainwater for irrigation and processing.

Challenges

There are of course challenges to this system. The process of harvesting is labour intensive, with the labour supply coming from largely from countries like Romania. A robotic harvester has been developed, however must harvest ’27 hours a day’ to be the same cost as a human. Once they reach 24 hours, the human element of production will largely be gone.

Additionally, the strings used for training the capsicum plants are plastic. To maintain production levels they are not able to use biodegradable strings as they are not transparent enough and block too much light. The plastic string is used for just one season and is the major waste product of the system.

This system is energy intensive, particularly in heating over the winter months. However, Van der Harg are working with NextGarden Agropark to reduce or capture emissions, to power the glasshouse in a sustainable way.

Same challenges, different growing system

Regardless of growing system or location, the same conversations are happening globally, in relation to the challenges growers face. Water, energy, ethical labour supply, agrichemical use, and plastics are issues facing farmers and growers regardless of system or size.

The post European Covered Production appeared first on LandWISE - Promoting sustainable land management.