Podcast: What's Next? from AgResearch

Can we do something about methane without ruining farming? 

There’s a lot of talk about the unique makeup of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, due to our being a big primary producer of food. Is there a way to address this without slashing stock numbers and making farming virtually impossible? 

In this episode we’ll talk to two AgResearch experts to see what’s being done to meet this problem – Dr Suzanne Rowe, who’s spent years researching the breeding of sheep for lower methane emissions, and Dr Brent Barrett, who’s exploring a trait that already exists in some of our ryegrass that could help cut nitrous oxide emissions while making the most of the nutrients we’re already using on-farm. 

Are alternative proteins going to wipe out the dairy industry?   

Alternative proteins such as dairy proteins produced through precision fermentation are now a reality globally. But what does it mean for New Zealand? Is this stuff grown in industrial vats a genuine threat to our livestock industries?

In this episode, our expert AgResearch senior scientist Scott Knowles outlines what precision fermentation is, how it might fit alongside conventional dairy production and what opportunities could be seized by New Zealand to add value to its existing markets (including the interesting role forestry waste might play).

To round out the episode, we’ll also hear about other technological advances that are driving research and innovations in agriculture. Our IT infrastructure and security manager Ben Taylor talks about the challenge of handling large volumes of data and the computing power now available; while senior data scientist Sam Hitchman discusses how new tools are making it much faster and easier to investigate issues such as methane output from animals.