The way forward
 At our recent Symposium a young science student from the Pūhoro STEM Academy (that we proudly sponsor) presented and said to us, “We’re 25% of the population, but we’re 100% of the future.”
It was a reminder for us, in the thick of writing our future strategy, that we needed to ensure that the young voices of the future and their vision for their land and water were at the front of our minds, and involved in deciding our strategic future science commitments.
“Wai Ora, Whenua Ora, Tangata Ora - Living Water, Living Land, Living People,”
were some of the wise words sent to me by our Next Generation Influencers team recently to help define our research vision for the future.
They said they wanted to see, clean waterways flowing from mountains to the sea and that, “The landscape between supports efficient and resilient businesses and ecosystems, an intertwined mosaic of the traditional and the new” and that the ideal end state was that, “We look after the land and the land looks after us, we have prosperous communities and whānau.” And I absolutely agree.
So how do we get there? It’s a work in progress, and I’ve summarised our progress to date in the areas below. We’re always open to hear your ideas about the future of the Challenge at any stage so if you want to contribute to this process please get in touch with us via ourlandandwater@agresearch.co.nz
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Future Strategy
Many of you will be aware that we are in the middle of the MBIE mid-way review process for all the National Science Challenges. We’ve undertaken a series of targeted engagement events with researchers and stakeholders since October last year, and we’ve been overwhelmed by your responses and tautoko you have for our cause and for the big challenge we have ahead of us:
Our future strategy flow of information process to date is outlined in the diagram below.
Engagement events by the numbers:
- More than 350 researchers and industry stakeholders have been consulted face-to-face about the future of Challenge science
- 131 researchers and stakeholders attended our research roadshows
- 77 people/groups presented their ideas to be considered as future Challenge research. Several stakeholders also took the opportunity to propose the research that they felt would be important to their industry based on the Challenge research scope.
- 12 ideas were then chosen to be presented at the Challenge annual Symposium.
- Feedback from more than 200 individuals who attended the Symposium saw nine of those ideas chosen to be collectively incorporated in to the future strategy.
Symposium
Thank you to all of you who spoke, asked questions and gave insights at our Symposium last month.
We were pleased to have a full house of engaged people in the room with us at the event to talk about the future of Challenge science.
Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods opened our event with a commitment to funding science and support for the work the sector and the Challenge is doing.
"The land and water that is Aotearoa New Zealand underpins our wellbeing as well as our economy. We need new ideas, innovation and ways of looking at the world and this is where science and research come in"
We had some incredible speakers, a mix of science presentations and end users including Steve Carden the Chief Executive of Pamu (Landcorp Farming) and James Palmer (Chief Executive of Hawkes Bay Regional Council) who are both leading their organisations through significant periods of change.
The videos of our speakers from this year’s Symposium can be found at the Our Land and Water Vimeo channel. Please share this with anyone who may be interested in the topic areas we covered or with those who were unable to make the event.
If you attended we would appreciate you filling out our short survey (it only takes 3-4 minutes). Please take the opportunity to share your thoughts with us.
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New ideas
During February and March we ran seven workshops across the country for researchers and stakeholders to propose and discuss ideas for future of Challenge research.
The result from 77 ideas was that 12 were selected for presentation at our Symposium and since then nine of those ideas have been chosen to be collectively incorporated in to the future strategy. To see the ideas that were presented at the Symposium visit: Our Land and Water Vimeo. These research ideas naturally group themselves into two clusters focussing on transition pathways and the future.
We look forward to keeping you updated about how these ideas develop and progress our research portfolio.
New research
We’ve conducted three research think-pieces across big areas of future research for the Challenge: the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Environmental non-government organisations and Transformation research. You can watch the recent presentations from the research lead of each area at:
UN Sustainability Goals - https://vimeo.com/265318456
Environmental NGO's - https://vimeo.com/265112868
Transformation - https://vimeo.com/265318308
Our 2018 Research Book is out now. It gives a snapshot of our current research programmes and several projects that have recently finished. 
You can read it online on our website here -
Spotlight on…Genomics
Our research story update for this month is from our Innovative Agricultural Microbiomes team who (as the photos show) recently braved some wild weather to collect their samples, talk about dedicated to the cause!
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Research began July 2017
Challenge Funding $1,800,000
Research Themes Innovative and resilient land and water use
Programme contact Graeme Attwood, AgResearch
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What are microbiomes?
Microbiomes are the microbes in a community and/or the full collection of genes of all the microbes in a community. Microbiomes involved in agricultural processes are linked by geochemical cycles, which are the pathways that chemical elements take in the surface of the earth.
In New Zealand dairy production systems pasture and animal productivity are strongly influenced by various inputs to the nitrogen cycle. These include atmospheric nitrogen fixed by legumes, recycled dairy cow effluent and the addition of nitrogenous fertilisers. Each of these nitrogen sources is made available through the action of microbes; via nitrogen-fixing bacteria associated with plants, protein-, peptide-, and amino acid-degrading bacteria in the rumen and by ammonifying and nitrifying bacteria in the soil. The key to productive and sustainable dairy farming is the balanced and efficient use of these nitrogen sources. An understanding of the contribution of these microbiomes is likely to realise significant additional gains in soil, plant, and animal productivity as well as a reduced environmental footprint.
What does this research test?
This programme tests whether efficient use of nitrogen in a ryegrass/white clover dairy production system is controlled by the composition of ,and activity and interaction between soil, plant and animal microbiomes that mediate nitrogen transactions in these environments.
This research will provide a better understanding of microbiome structure and environmental function, and the implications for farm system productivity and sustainability. The novel meta-microbiome approach in this research including the data generated and the analysis procedures developed will underpin future research in the area.
Why do we need this research?
To our knowledge, this research will be the first time multiple microbiome structures and activities have been defined in a dairy farm. The outcome of this programme will provide the microbial community profiles of the microbes present in each of the 10 microbiomes analysed from matched samples sourced from animals, plants and soils which make up a dairy grazing system. This work is using agricultural microbiome information to develop new technologies to drive greater agricultural productivity and reduced environmental impacts. An anticipated output from these microbiome data will be marker genes that are correlated with productivity and/or sustainable practices that will provide supporting evidence for product verification schemes to show that New Zealand’s pastoral farming systems are natural and sustainable.
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NZ Geographic
An Our Land and Water feature is currently out the March/April edition New Zealand Geographic. The feature ‘farming for our future’ covers some serious ground (pun intended). A summary best described by this Tweet...
It’s been great to see how widely this feature has been shared online via our own, the NZ Farming facebook page and New Zealand Geographic’s channels.
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You can read the full feature online here - https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/farming-for-our-future/
If you’d like some hardcopies for yourself or your workplace please just email us and we can send them out to you.
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MBIE Challenge highlights booklet
MBIE have recently released a Challenge Book that provides a summary of all 11 Challenges which you can access on the Our Land and Water website.
Next Generation Influencers
Upcoming event in June
Calling all Challenge scientists and colleagues!
All of that innovative research you are doing…. How about coming and running a ‘stall’ at our innovation market space…?
We are running a programme called the Next Generation of Influencers (NGI). NGI is about connecting science and society and supporting a group of people to embrace the challenge of land and water stewardship, and is a part of the Challenge.
One of the events we’ll be running focuses on innovation in the land and water sphere and includes our ‘innovation marketplace’. Based in Lincoln, the marketplace will resemble an expo, with lots of ‘stalls’ where people can come and show their innovations. We would love for you to be a part of this and run a stall to exhibit your work. The marketplace is all about creating momentum around good ideas, bringing new thinking to old problems and enabling change on the ground. We envision this to be a space where workshop participants as well as visitors to the event can look at your work and have a chat about your skills, experiences and ideas
The event will start at 11.30 am on Wednesday 13th June in the Fitzgerald room at Plant and Food Research Lincoln.
We will provide tables for you to set up your stall on and there will be some lunch at around 12.30. The event will end about 1.15.
If this is something you might be keen on, give Melissa a call or email:
T +64 3 321 9873
M +64 21 0486 171
email on Robson-WilliamsM@landcareresearch.co.nz
Pūhoro STEM Academy
Academy students have been busy recently with their studies and wananga and whanau day. You can check out their video from their whanau day below. Some of the Puhoro team also presented at our Symposium last month and blew our crowd members away with their inspirational korero, watch at https://vimeo.com/265112630
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Check out this awesome video from the STEM Academy whanau from their recent family day
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