A new ‘Data Supermarket’ can assist New Zealand’s primary sector in identifying suitable new land opportunities.
Although Te Puke is well-known as New Zealand’s kiwifruit capital, new research might indicate that this top spot could be contested in the future. Effectively, suitable kiwifruit production land has been identified in Waikato, Taranaki and the top of the South Island.
With the launch of the Data Supermarket, information about the land use suitability and production potential of a wide variety of crops became much easier to find today. The Data Supermarket is a new online storehouse of data about the ingredients, food and fibre New Zealand can grow now and in the future. It includes information about a wide array of vegetable, fruit, arable, animal, plant and tree crops, plus climate and economic data.
Dr Robyn Dynes, research lead at AgResearch, says the goal of the Data Supermarket is to assist the primary sector to identify a greater range of suitable land opportunities.
The Data Supermarket is free, and is stocked full of datasets that provide a broad understanding of the benefits and consequences of a wide range of land use opportunities. The range of datasets is growing all the time and each dataset includes information about its limitations and how the data was produced, and most include GIS layers. The information can be downloaded for use in third-party tools. Data is open-access and suitable for New Zealand use only.
The Data Supermarket is now accessible at www.landuseopportunities.nz .
