Projects

Energy Efficiency

There is an increasing emphasis on energy efficiency driven both from increasing fuel costs and consumer demands for improved sustainable production systems. 

AgriLINK NZ provides individual outdoor vegetable growers with energy benchmarking and audits as part of their requirements to meet buyers quality and environmental programmes.

AgriLINK NZ has also conducted national energy benchmarking projects for the arable, outdoor vegetable, greenhouse, dairy and kiwifruit industries. Some of these reports have been made publicly available and can be downloaded from this website. In addition a number of templates have been prepared that can be used to calculate the impact of the carbon charge and compare your own energy inputs to some benchmarks in the arable and outdoor vegetable industry.

AgriLINK NZ has prepared two stocktake reports for the arable and outdoor vegetable industry, and the dairy farming industry on technologies and services  that farmers can implement to improve their energy efficiency. Both reports can be downloaded from our technical report page, or clicking on the links above.  They also include a general description of the total estimated energy flows within the NZ Rural Sector.

AgriLINK NZ is involved in the Agricultural Research Group on Sustainability (ARGOS). This is a project funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) and various industry stakeholders and commenced in October 2003. ARGOS has a mandate to examine the environmental, social and economic sustainability of New Zealand farming systems.The goal of the ARGOS research is to facilitate innovation and improved performance in primary production systems. The research programme has secured 'long-term' funding for 6 years from FRST as a first step in a 20 to 30 year project.  AgriLINK NZ's role is to research the total energy indicators as well as investigating aspects of irrigation efficiency.

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