On Monday August 3rd we had 25 diners, where we welcomed past member Ferg Nicholson, and our speaker for the evening Dr Jessica O’Connor, who just happens to be Jill and Rod’s daughter-in-law.
Jessica was born on a dairy farm, and was totally immersed in a rural upbringing. She went to Lincoln, and then Massey to study plant breeding, but with a timeframe of up to 15 years to see the results, she was introduced to a more immediate return on her work in the field of waste.
She gave a very interesting talk about food losses on the farm, and food waste at the retail end of the food ‘journey’. Her two areas of particular focus related to dairy farming and apple production—(incidentally Trish and I had a town supply dairy farm 1975-81 near Invercargill and an apple orchard in Hawkes Bay from 1981 -1987, so I could relate well to where the ‘on-farm’ losses she covered actually occur--how true those losses are!!).