Robert Hickson • Apr 03, 2019 •
It’s easy to get momentarily excited about robots on the farm, particularly if they are close to home, picking apples or herding stock. Robots have been rolling out onto farms elsewhere for several years and the pace is picking up, so NZ is in … Read More
Guest Author • Sep 18, 2012 •
By Prof. Jack Heinemann, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury. My report on assessing the risks of a form of GM wheat has sparked heated comment here and on other blog sites. The Sciblog-associated Science Media Centre (NZ) included comments from Peter Dearden and a link to the “Genetics Otago” blog along with comments made by … Read More
Aimee Whitcroft • May 13, 2010 •
Statistics New Zealand’s just released its figures for New Zealand’s agricultural production to June 2009. The overall message? Dairy cows are up 5% to almost 6 million, with a particularly big increase in the South Island. On the other hand, sheep are down 5% to a little over 32 million: half their … Read More
Aimee Whitcroft • Apr 07, 2010 •
This week marks the inaugural meeting of the Global Research Alliance (GRA). For those of you not familiar with it, it’s probably one of the best things to come out of last year’s largely-failed Copenhagen talks. The idea had first budded in late 2008, but was officially launched … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 15, 2010 •
By Prof. Jack Heinemann* Dr. Nina Federoff, the science advisor to the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, voiced more blatantly in New Zealand what many other advocates of large-scale plantings of genetically engineered (GE/GM) plants sought to imply for years: ’There’s almost no food that isn’t genetically modified. Genetic modification is the basis of all evolution.’ This stance … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 02, 2010 •
The final in a Statistics New Zealand series about the numbers in our world Let the sheep jokes end! The people are catching up. There are now fewer than eight sheep to every New Zealander. This is a far cry from the good old days when one of the few things foreigners knew about New Zealand was … Read More