It’s been a tough year
Blog post.
Raphael Spiekermann and Tom Mackay-Smith
10/23/20252 min read
Developing a new product is challenging.
This year, we had a major setback.
Tree guard failures
In our 2024 prototype trials, we installed 2,600 guards across 12 farms. We made this decision after 100 guards performed well over eight months in 2023.
However, after last summer, the guards began breaking down under UV exposure.
When cattle or sheep entered the paddocks, it was carnage.
This was tough to watch — especially after the effort that went into planting.
It took a total of 525 unpaid hours to clean up the guards.
We’re incredibly grateful to Auckland Regional Council, Dairy Trust Taranaki, Taranaki Regional Council, and Greater Wellington Regional Council for providing funding so we can continue these trials.
This experience has taught us a lot as we develop our new guard.
The design has subsequently been completely upgraded.
We will also roll it out in a slower, more staged approach starting next year.
Every failure gets us closer to our goal of producing a portable and scalable guard that protects native trees from cattle!
Unfortunate news on our MBIE application
Unfortunately, our MBIE Endeavour Research Programme proposal – “Transforming New Zealand’s red-meat productivity using native silvopastoral design” – just missed out on being selected.
This year's funding appears to favour more technology-driven projects. Trees and farming, it seems, were not the topic of the month.
That said, we are very positive that we got so close on our first attempt.
We remain determined to demonstrate how native silvopastoral systems can transform the productivity and resilience of New Zealand’s hill country through science.
Photo of the month
We recently hosted the funders of our root project, Auckland Regional Council.
We have now collected all the data, and the early results are very interesting indeed! We’ll provide a more detailed update later this year.
