Agriculture

NIWA tools and knowledge can help farmers to improve decision-making, mitigate farm environment risk, and to become more productive, efficient, competitive and sustainable.

  • Restoration of aquatic ecosystems

    Research Project
    This project aims to increase our knowledge of aquatic ecosystems and their restoration, and apply this to degraded streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries.
  • Rangiora cattle

    Climate change and agriculture

    Education Resource
    Helping you understand the science of climate change. The things we can do to combat climate change, individually, and alongside our whānau, school and community, can and will make a difference.
  • Bridging the forecasting gap

    Feature story
    Improvements in data and climate science mean forecasters are able to predict patterns much further ahead and in far greater detail. Melissa Bray looks at what this may mean for farmers.
  • Riparian Buffer Design Guide

    This guide discusses design principles and provides high-level information about the likely performance of riparian buffers.
  • IrriSET - Irrigation Strategy Evaluation Tool

    IrriSET helps farmers to understand the economic viability and environmental efficiency of various irrigation strategies and prioritise their irrigation investments.
  • Quantifying and reducing agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases

    Research Project
    Almost half of Aotearoa New Zealand’s CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. This is a much higher proportion than most other countries – globally, agricultural emissions average around 7.5% of a country’s total emissions.
  • Irrigation Insight

    Feature story
    Irrigation Insight is a joint industry programme funded by MBIE to examine, on working farms, the ease and effectiveness of using high-resolution weather forecasting, production potential, and drainage estimations for on-farm water management.
  • Diquat use for submerged weeds

    Diquat is a herbicide (chemical) that has been used in New Zealand for many decades for submerged (underwater) weed control and also on agricultural crops. It is registered for freshwater use in New Zealand.
  • NIWA’s Estuarine Trophic Index

    Research Project
    Constructed wetlands, detention bunds, woodchip denitrification filters and planted riparian buffers are examples of a growing suite of edge-of-field and farm-scale mitigation systems that are being trialled across rural New Zealand to reduce the impact of diffuse pollution on freshwater quality
  • (no image provided)

    Water storage solutions for irrigation schemes

  • Fieldays - farming for the future

    Feature story
    Farmers visiting Fieldays at Mystery Creek in June could not have missed the take-home message: that science and innovation are key to their continued success.
  • Community project inspires scientists

    Media release
    A project to restore a stream catchment in Kaikōura—damaged in the 2016 earthquake—is being described as inspirational by NIWA scientists.