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Efforts to boost farm productivity and curb agricultural pollution are set to swing into action after an injection of $34 million in public and private sector research funding.
The Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FoRST), the government's research funding body, said yesterday it was teaming up with three industry bodies to pump the money into two AgResearch projects aimed at increasing agricultural output while easing the sector's environmental impact.
FoRST said it would provide the projects with $4.3 million a year for four years, with Dairy Insight, Fonterra and Meat and Wool New Zealand together matching that amount.
The development comes because of industry disappointment at the level of funding committed to agricultural research by the government in last year's Budget and pressure by agricultural lobby group Pastoral 21 to increase government investment in primary sector research.
AgResearch beat other competitors for the funds with bids centred on proposals to help farmers squeeze more energy out of stock feed and reduce contamination from farm run-off.
FoRST said the award brings to $100 million the amount of research money it has tied up in primary sector research.
AgResearch senior scientist Cecile de Klein, who will lead the team tackling environmental fallout, said the project hoped to develop "farmer-friendly" tools and technologies for monitoring, measuring and reducing nitrogen, phosphate and faecal material pollution into waterways.
Her team would focus on nitrification inhibitors, which prevented the formation of nitrates, as well as seeking to prove the effectiveness of winter grazing practices such as herd homes, whose solid floors helped prevent nitrates entering waterways via stock urine during the wetter months.
She said the team also planned to develop materials to absorb phosphates before they entered rivers and streams, and look at ways of preventing erosion, which helped deposit phosphorus in streams and rivers.
The second project, headed by AgResearch's Derek Woodfield, aims to boost farm productivity by increasing the amount of energy animals could extract from their feed.
His team would investigate alternative feed sources to traditional ryegrass-clover pastures and research changes in composition via genetic manipulation and traditional breeding to boost traits in foraging plants that either delivered more energy or increased the breakdown of feed during digestion, he said.
The research planned for the next four years would bring together seven organisations and deliver "some concrete outcomes", he said.
