Event Update: Healthy soils... Healthy Profits

"Healthy Soils...Healthy Profits" conference hosted at the Toi Toi Event Centre in Hastings.

Added one year ago

Event Update: Healthy soils... Healthy Profits

We are thrilled to share the success of the recent "Healthy Soils...Healthy Profits" conference hosted at the Toi Toi Event Centre in Hastings.
With a great turnout of 135 attendees, the event brought together farmers, agricultural experts, and enthusiasts passionate about the pivotal role that soil health, and soil carbon, plays in sustainable and profitable farming practices.
"Healthy Soils...Healthy Profits" aimed to grow awareness and commitment to sustainable agriculture to benefit our rural community.
A big thanks to all our presenters on the day.
Well known local farmer and company director Mike Petersen gave a compelling update of changing trends in demand and how NZ products are perceived by our international markets and customers when compared to other exporting countries.
Northlander, Peter Bruce-Iri discussed the importance of ruminant animals in the regenerative systems.
A highlight of the conference was the zoom link with Steven Apfelbaum of Applied Ecological Institute (AEI) based in the USA. Steven spoke about their journey working with farmers/ranchers for many years to establish eco credits focused on soil carbon over large areas, working with certification standards and carbon registry Regenerative Standard.
A useful panel discussion with the audience made up of regen expert John King, sustainable diary farmers Sam Hogg and Willie White and local soil carbon consultant Paul Smith.
The panel gave practical examples from their own experiences of valuable steps farmers could take on board when next thinking about what is happening to the soil on their farms and what is happening to soil carbon and micro-bio activity.
Longer pasture rotations and diverse pastures with deeper roots, keeping permanent covers on the soil, improving soil carbon to hold more nutrients and moisture and adjusting stocking rates to optimise returns rather than optimising output, being open minded to consider new thinking and start by taking small steps to reduce risk were some of the themes talked about.
Trees make up an important part of the farm ecosystem and have an important part to play in soil management. Michael Bassett-Foss discussed the HBRC Land for Life program with monitor farms who have mapped out areas for grazing, plantation woodlots and native reserve areas and Tim Sandall from Pan Pac presented their company vision of the importance of the community and how they want to manage their forestry estates including farm woodlots in the future.
Dan Bloomer & Alex Dickson presented the Carbon Positive project focused on comparing growing systems that can build soil health.
James Palmer the CEO for Ministry for the Environment talked about the urgent need to adapt to climate change in the future.
We encouraged attendees to think about how they could implement the knowledge gained, in adapting their farming practices.