Click here to read ARIA booklet
FAR’s inaugural Arable Research in Action Field Day at Chertsey was a huge success. Upwards of 400 people attended the event, listening to expert presentations, lunching in the shade of the huge marquee and meeting again at the end of the day for a barbecue and a beer.
CEO Nick Pyke says FAR is committed to ensuring farmers have access to the best information for their farm businesses and that the ARIA event proved a great platform for transferring knowledge to our growers.
“It was great to see such a good cross section of the arable industry in attendance. It was a really good mix of growers and industry representatives. Regional and national government agencies were also well represented, most importantly by Jo Goodhew, local MP and Associate Minister for Primary Industries.”
Minister Goodhew presented the FAR Researcher of the Year Award to long serving Plant & Food Research scientist Ross Hanson in recognition of his contribution to field crop agronomy in New Zealand.
Twelve presentations were given in the morning and repeated in the afternoon, with talks on stubble burning, cereals disease management, crop management and weed and pest control drawing good crowds. International guest speaker Lise Jorgenson, from Aarhus University in Denmark drew large audiences for her talks, which focussed on two pesticide issues: the development of fungicide resistance in Danish cereal crops, and the introduction of a targeted pesticide tax in Denmark. Growing interest in the development of sustainable production systems in New Zealand means that growers here were very interested in learning more about the systems their Danish counterparts are dealing with.
Another guest speaker was Potatoes NZ CEO Champak Mehta, who joined Nick Pyke in outlining the proposed Potatoes NZ and FAR research partnership. Their presentation attracted growers who were levy payers to both organisations and led to some interesting discussions on the potential synergies.
The ARIA field day was a change in format from FAR’s 2011 and 2012 CROPS events which included demonstration sites from industry sponsors. This change was introduced to put the spotlight on FAR research.
“We have decided to switch between ARIA and CROPS each year. This means that one year the focus will be very much on our trials and the next it will be shared between FAR research and sponsors’ demonstrations. We already have a date for CROPS 2014, Wednesday 3 December, and a number of our previous sponsors have already indicated that they wish to be involved.”
ARIA Day a Huge Success
