Grower Howe Young, has come a long way from weekly spraying in the late 1970s to nowadays championing crop monitoring, biodiversity and softer chemistries.
In this video, Howe describes his crop protection journey from his early years on the family vegetable farm to becoming an integral player in the success of the numerous A Lighter Touch projects and activities at the Pukekohe Research and Demonstration Farm, where he is farm manager.
Olivia Prouse is the project lead for the A Lighter Touch-Vegetables New Zealand-Onions New Zealand biodiversity project at the farm. She credits Howe’s willingness to try new options and interest in the use of beneficials to support pest management as an important contributing factor to enabling work which contributes to industry knowledge and helps to de-risk new practices for other growers.
Farm manager Howe Young and ALT-Vegetables New Zealand-Onions New Zealand biodiversity project technical lead Olivia Prouse.
“Without that openness to trying them, we can’t make some of these things move forward in a commercial setting,” she says.
And as Howe sees it, less reliance on sprays, and more monitoring is where the industry is heading. “If we don’t change our practices, we’re going to have resistance and not many chemicals [left] to use.”
For more videos, check out the ALT YouTube channel here.
