John McPhee

John is a researcher in the Vegetable Centre of the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture.  John has long experience working with farmers to develop systems to care for soil, save time and energy, and grow good crops.

John addressed LandWISE in 2009. Five years later he is returning to share experiences and update us on developments in Tasmania, across Australia and around the world. He will discuss steps farmers can make as they move towards seasonal controlled traffic farming and full controlled traffic farming in mixed vegetable production systems.

John will show examples of machinery and discuss some of the challenges of CTF when a range of crops is compounded with livestock in the system. However, he shows the economics stack up and the soil benefits are real.

Chris Butler

Chris has also addressed previous LandWISE events. He recently returned to SnapFresh Foods to grow salad crops in South Auckland. He will discuss the implications of reverting from controlled traffic farming back to random trafficking. He has seen very significant soil changes, and increases in machinery and energy requirements, water ponding and costs.

Chris has considerable experience setting up controlled traffic farming systems, having worked with David Clark to introduce CTF ofr maize in Gisborne, and growing salads on sands in Rangiriri and volcanic clays in Mangere.

John and Chris are presenters at LandWISE 2014 – Ever Better: Farmers, land and water.