Let’s Hope The Weather Holds

I speak to Fokko van der Schans and Sabrine van Rossum from Harvest Collective about their idea of starting a farm near Wellington where +- 200 families get together and employ a farmer to grow food in a way that respects nature. On their website they say “Our big dream is to have a Harvest Collective farm in every community of people in Aotearoa that want to grow food in harmony with nature.” The idea works in The Netherlands, why not here.

I speak to Fokko van der Schans and Sabrine van Rossum from Harvest Collective about their idea of starting a farm near Wellington where +- 200 families get together and employ a farmer to grow food in a way that respects nature. On their website they say "Our big dream is to have a Harvest Collective farm in every community of people in Aotearoa that want to grow food in harmony with nature." The idea works in The Netherlands, why not here.  

I speak to Dr. Finn Ross about the mountain rescue of Riley Meason, reaching the Pole of Inaccessibility, New Zealand's most remote spot, The Weekend Mish, regenerative agriculture and changing mindsets, his PhD and how seaweed is a climate solution. Find him here

I speak to Associate Professor Nic Rawlence, Director of the Otago Palaeogenetics Laboratory in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago about elephant seals. He tells me about a recent paper published titled Postglacial Recolonization of the Southern Ocean by Elephant Seals Occurred From Multiple Glacial Refugia. We discuss climate impact on elephant seals in the past and in the future. The effect of commercial hunting and traditional harvest. Dark intraspecific extinction. We touch on how animal numbers looked in New Zealand when humans arrived, how to save elephant seals, if ChatGPT is any good for DNA work and more.

I speak to Pascale Lubbe, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Molecular Ecology, at the University of Otago about how current loss of forests, loss when people arrived in New Zealand and loss of forest during the ice age have an effect on native birds and on bird colonisation. An interesting read is the article Pascale collaborated on that was published in The Conversation.