With few ‘lead by example’ stories coming out of New Zealand currently we thought this story out of Australia might encourage our producers to make a start on their own biosecurity arrangements. http://www.farmbiosecurity.com.au/biosecurity-strategy-paves-the-way-for-higher-crop-yields-and-lower-costs/
I want to relate a true story. A couple of weeks ago we met a South Island dairy farmer that had been caught up in the M. Bovis response. We spoke about what this had meant for him and his business – none of it good other than that he was now able to get […]
“Farm biosecurity is not only a farmers responsibility, but of every person visiting or working on the property. If a new pest or disease becomes established on farms, it affects business through increased costs (for monitoring, production practices, additional chemical use and labour), reduced productivity (in yield and/or quality) or, importantly, loss of markets. ” […]
Often we think about the cost of biosecurity incursions in terms of the millions of dollars spent eradicating or mitigating or of the number of animals/produce culled or destroyed. As a result its easy to neglect the human cost and in doing so justify our own inaction. We commend MPI for reminding us that Biosecurity […]
It was awesome news that MPI in its stakeholder update last week, effectively ruled out effluent as a transmission vector for M. Bovis – that’s one less disease transmitted in poo (lets not forget there are other diseases that can be). It was also good to see MPI reiterate the general hygiene message and for […]
We thought we’d start the New Year with a reflection on 2018, to set the scene for the year ahead. Last year, KPMG’s 2018 Agribusiness Agenda provided some powerful insights into the current thinking about New Zealand’s Biosecurity. For the 60 business and farming leaders who were surveyed for the agenda, the top priority among […]
“Biosecurity measures that improve disease awareness of farmers were ranked as both most important and most effective” by this Swedish study surveying the views of industry experts. It supports the view that though they may not always be the most effective measures for restricting the spread of any one disease, elements of a biosecurity plan […]
In the absence of good New Zealand data this Australian survey (1200 respondents) shows just how hard it is to bring about sustainable behaviour change to our biosecurity practices. The Aussies have been going at it much longer than us and yet their most practiced biosecurity measure – controlling weeds – was only reported by […]
This article, published in 2016 takes the words right out of our mouths even in 2018. Why has there been so little change in our readiness and resilience? In our view it’s in part apathy and in part because we’re (the rural professional community) not demonstrating sustainable, long-term behaviours to our landowner customers and colleagues. […]
This practical extension article out of Canada insightfully explains how farm workers learn about biosecurity. In a nutshell they do most of their learning while on the job and through observing the positive, and negative behaviours of their managers, peers and mentors. It goes on to point out that knowing how good biosecurity practice influences […]