The Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) has launched its 2017-2021 Strategy, which aims to make cropping the highest returning and most sustainable broadacre land use for New Zealand farmers.
CEO Nick Pyke says the strategy builds on FAR’s strengths as a provider of quality research and extension and on the innate strengths of New Zealand’s cropping industry.
“New Zealand’s temperate climate, quality soils, plentiful water and highly skilled farmers provide us with some key advantages over other food producing nations. Accordingly, FAR’s new strategy has been designed to ensure that our research team works alongside the cropping industry, helping it to reach its full potential as New Zealand’s most economically and environmentally sustainable farming system.
“The strategy has four key pillars: Leading research, Strong collaborations, Excellent communication and Sustainable businesses. These pillars feed into our research and extension portfolio, which aligns projects into four areas: New innovative products, Sustainably produced feed and food for livestock industries, Building better and more robust farms and Improving farm viability.”
Mr Pyke says a cropping farmers are dealing with a number of agronomic, climatic and compliance issues at present, and that FAR’s research priorities were constantly being monitored to ensure that these were being taken into account.
Current research priorities include:
- Understanding and developing management strategies to minimize the risk of agrichemical resistance.
- Measuring, monitoring and managing the efficiency of inputs in cropping systems.
- Developing new crops and products to improve farm profitability.
- Providing effective tools to manage, store and report farm practices.
- Providing new solution to manage crops and increase yields.
The Strategy will help ensure cropping farmers have solutions they can integrate into their farm systems over the next five to 10 years following our referendum of growers in July this year.
The FAR Strategy with launched in Wellington this week with support from the Minister for Primary Industries, Hon Nathan Guy.