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2025 News

  1. Strategic, tactical, complex, and simple: a four-way schema for measuring on-farm change

    In the face of climate and other environmental change, regulatory and economic changes, farmers are always under pressure to redesign and improve their systems and to adopt new practices. Some change in practice (e.g. doing something completely different to existing ways) are more complex than other...

  2. Tell us what you want, what you really, really want

    Surveys that include measures of people’s well-being are widely used at the national scale to measure social progress and to inform environmental, social and economic decision-making. Well-being frameworks generally encompass aspects of housing, income, personal health, access to green space and rec...

  3. Survey of Rural Decision Makers 2025: a vital tool in the ag-sector toolbox

    The Survey of Rural Decision Makers is the leading source of information about New Zealand’s primary sector. Conducted every 2 years, thousands of farmers, foresters, growers, and lifestyle block owners from Cape Reinga / Te Rereanga Wairua to Halfmoon Bay complete the survey.

  4. Turn and face the change: what drives primary sector risk-taking?

    The future importance of transformative adaptations in the face of climate, technological, economic and other future changes is familiar rhetoric – including in the primary sector.

  5. Transforming Pacific agriculture for a resilient future

    In April 2025 the cross-party New Zealand Government 2025 Pacific Mission visited Tonga, announcing the MFAT-funded CALM programme (Climate Smart Agriculture and Sustainable Land Management). Tonga, alongside Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Niue, and the Cook Islands, is partnering with Manaaki Whenua on the ...

  6. Separating truth from fiction in AI

    Did you see the US election images of Swifties for Trump? Hear Sir David Attenborough narrating the moment an ant falls into someone’s fish tank? Or the talkshow clip of Greta Thunberg – yes, her! – talking about vegan grenades? Unbelievable!

  7. Green streets: measuring the many benefits of urban trees

    The health, social, amenity, climate and ecosystem benefits of urban trees are well-known – from flood mitigation to carbon sequestration to air quality improvement. A view of trees from the workplace even contributes to reducing the average number of days of sick leave that people take.

  8. Hive talking: fewer winter losses in 2024 for the nation’s beekeepers

    Conducted annually since 2015, the New Zealand Colony Loss Survey is based on the survey of beekeepers developed by the international COLOSS honey bee research association.

  9. Major step forward in understanding facial eczema in livestock

    Facial eczema is a disease of livestock that causes liver damage, lowered production, skin irritation and peeling, and sometimes death. It is caused by a toxin produced primarily by the spores of a fungus growing in the dead litter at the base of pasture in warm moist conditions.

  10. News in brief

    Cats among the pigeons. Advice on transition forest management for the PCE. New Zealand Plant Checklists published. Contributing our science to the Treasury’s Living Standard Framework