Workshop celebrates 25th year

Massey’s Fertiliser and Lime Research Centre held its 25th annual workshop at Manawatu campus last week.

This year’s event, Advanced Nutrient Management, included a session dedicated to the late Keith Syers, the foundation director of the centre who passed away in 2011.

The workshop covered a range of issues facing the agricultural industry including nutrient management, farm dairy effluent and water.

A highlight this year was a presentation by Robert Glennon of the Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona, who spoke about the water crisis in the United States.

A second invited keynote speaker, Raphael Viscarra Rossel from CSIRO Land and Water in Canberra, presented a paper on the expanding use of remote and proximal sensing tools to determine soil properties.

Other speakers included representatives from NIWA, DairyNZ, Landcare Research, Plant and Food Research, AgResearch, regional councils and from the major fertiliser companies, along with a number of Massey University researchers.

The centre’s senior technical manager and workshop organiser Lance Currie says a dinner was held during the workshop to celebrate the silver jubilee.

“The workshop has evolved over the past twenty five years to be a highly significant event on the agricultural calendar in New Zealand,” he says. “More than 220 people were in attendance again this year, representing a wide cross-section of the stakeholders whose collective aim is the promotion of farming for an economically and environmentally sustainable future.”