WARNING: This article contains a graphic image that some viewers might find disturbing.
A farmer from Orepuki in Southland is developing an edible bale net wrap.
Grant Lightfoot is using flax to manufacture the Kiwi Econet. The netting can be used for the inside net on baleage or hay and straw bales, and doesn’t need to be removed from bales for feeding.
Lightfoot came up with the idea for the netting five years ago while sitting in a decompression chamber on a commercial diving job.
He said he no longer has time to do commercial diving as he runs his velveting deer farm, has a 242 hectare cow calf run-off block and carts logs.
Lightfoot’s invention won the Southern Rural Life Farm Innovation Awards at the Southern Field Days at Waimumu this year.
Since then he has been fielding calls from potential buyers daily, he said.
He wants the edible netting to be a success for the sake of the environment and for animal health reasons.
Many farmers do not realise the scale of plastic manufacturing, he said.
Some overseas companies produce over 5 million rolls of plastic net wrapping per year, and it often ends up completely or partially in the environment, he said.
Rolls are often longer than 3000m.
He also wants to put a stop to the damage it does to stock that eats netting when it is not completely removed from the environment after feeding out.
Lightfoot has many photo examples of animals put down by veterinarians because of complications suffered from digesting plastic bale net wrap stuck in their gut.
The Econet has been third-party tested, with Eurofins Food Analytics testing a milk sample from a cow fed the wrap, with no heavy metals found.
Lightfoot has also not found any trace of the netting in cows fed the netting and killed as homekill.
Eurofins Food Analytics also confirmed availability of nutrients in the netting.
The netting not only eliminates plastic waste, but saves on personnel hours as it requires less of the handling needed for wrap removal and disposal.
Lightfoot said he had to look for funding overseas as there wasn’t any interest locally to fund the project.
He has also had difficulty getting permission to use local flax, and has resorted to using flax from overseas.
To test his idea he initially hand-stitched the net and put it through a baler.
Manufacturing is now done “offshore”.
The net works on baleage, but he is having some teething problems when wrapping hay and straw as it expands considerably after wrapping.
He hopes to have the hay and straw problems solved when he next receives a prototype from the manufacturer.
Netting that isn’t eaten simply rots, he said.
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