New Zealand wool growers to benefit from regenerative farming protocol
The New Zealand Merino Company has announced a new partnership with Land To Market, a programme set up by non-profit organisation The Savory Institute to help consumers choose products verified to have come from regenerative agriculture projects.
This partnership will aim to give extra assurances to buyers who want to choose material that comes from farms committed to improving the soil, water, air and biodiversity.
A regenerative wool platform called ZQRX launched at the start of 2021. Farmers that The New Zealand Merino Company has signed up now raise sheep on land covering more than 3.7 million acres.
Land To Market will now add its support to these growers to help establish regenerative agriculture; it will monitor the resulting ecological outcomes. It said the partnership would offer New Zealand wool growers science-backed, outcome-based solutions.
Through a protocol called Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV), which The Savory Institute developed with Michigan State University, Texas A&M, Ovis 21, The Nature Conservancy and others, it said it would be able to support farmers “throughout their regenerative journey, and determine the outcomes of their management”.
