CropsIn Whole Earth Farming, Smallholder Farmers Alliance co-founder Hugh Locke argues that moving about 240 million of the Global South's 475 million small farms to regenerative agriculture and agroforestry could supply all the extra food needed by 2050 while restoring soils and drawing down up to 0.72
EnvironmentModels point to the current El Niño exceeding the 1982–83 event, with central Pacific sea-surface anomalies possibly above 3.0 °C, yet the Bureau of Meteorology says a neutral-for-now Indian Ocean Dipole, warm seas around Australia and long-term warming will shape spring and summer as much; water st
CropsDelegated Regulation 2026/1423 lists the organophosphate as a restricted persistent pollutant without exemptions, extending scrutiny from produce to packaging, textiles and leather; India, a major producer and user, has resisted a global phase-out.
LivestockGillian Martin told the Scottish Parliament's climate committee that a shortfall in transport emissions savings would force a rethink of how statutory targets are met, reviving a debate the 2026–2040 climate plan had closed.
EnvironmentThe Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust, formed by farmers in 2001, is combining drone imagery with on-foot surveys and eDNA tests to show landowners such as fourth-generation farmer Tim Coop what indigenous vegetation survives on their 1,600 hectare hill properties, and to map regrowth after Februar
AgribusinessWestpac NZ's economists put a severe El Niño drought across northern and eastern New Zealand at a potential 1 per cent hit to GDP; its head of agribusiness Richard Anderson urges farmers to update budgets, check water and feed, set stock-sale trigger points and repair irrigation while the sector's l
Trial plantings of baen (Avicennia) mangroves by the NGO CODEC in the Badarkhali channel and Rampura mouza of Chakaria, Cox's Bazar, are surviving well; experts say the near-vanished forest can return only if tidal flow, blocked by shrimp-farm embankments, is restored and three other barriers are re
Rezaul Kibria Babul, imam of a mosque in Omarpur union of Charfasson upazila, Bhola, raises seedlings in his own nursery and has lined village roads with fruit, medicinal and palmyra trees for 34 years, funded by selling inherited land and his savings.
LivestockIn the farmer-led Catch the Rain project funded by Beef + Lamb New Zealand and led by Quorum Sense, extending pasture recovery from a standard 30 days to 60–90-plus days almost doubled water infiltration within nine months on three farms; a fish-hydrolysate biostimulant lifted it by about a third, w
LivestockA Canterbury study in the Journal of Animal Science comparing eight plantain–chicory–ryegrass diets in 120 young sheep found no meaningful evidence that plantain's secondary compounds raise urine output; low forage dry matter drove the effect, which DairyNZ accepts while pointing to farmlet trials s
AgribusinessVineyard land on the Heretaunga Plains is selling at pastoral prices — one 30.7 ha block with a $2.8 million rateable value fetched $800,000 — as the wine downturn, Wattie's and McCain pulling back and years of paused water consenting under the regional council's contested TANK plan leave growers un
CropsAn overwinter cover crop of endophytic meadow fescue, rolled and sprayed off before strip-tilled sugar beet, left just 0.3 aphids per plant against five after a standard cover crop in a British Beet Research Organisation trial at Morley Farms, offering growers a non-chemical lever against virus yell
Jamie and Nicky Gaddum's 865ha Matangi operation now sells grass-fed Angus beef and chicory-finished lamb through its own butchery, uses drones and precision fertiliser, plants 3,000 native seedlings a year and was named 2026 Ballance Farm Environment Awards East Coast Supreme Champion.
