https://www.scmp.com/rss/323572/feed Eleanor is a journalist for the Guardian based in New Zealand. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com It was the wrong side of dawn when the makeshift alarm sounded, its shrill whirr slicing through the frigid winter night. Ashby Whitehead sprang from his bed and ran to his ute, hoping that his homemade booby traps had finally paid off. “I’d set up surveillance systems, a car alarm and tripwires but when it came down to it I wasn’t fast enough to catch them,” says Whitehead, an avocado grower whose orchards have been targeted five years in a row. Why is it so hard to find a decent avocado in... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2171071/new-zealand-avocado-farmers-arm-themselves?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2171071/new-zealand-avocado-farmers-arm-themselves?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 01 Nov 2018 02:30:15 +0000 It was the day the bees died – tens of thousands of them in 300 hives, mysteriously killed. “The massacre”, as it is being called, happened in the otherwise idyllic landscape of Doubtless Bay, in New Zealand’s far north. And for David Yanke and Rachel Kearney, co-owners of Daykel Apiaries, the cause of death was obvious: malicious poisoning. “It is a nightmare, I don’t feel safe any more,” says Kearney, as she sits at her kitchen table on her family’s farm, 40km east of the Northland hub of... https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2044342/honey-wars-whats-killing-new-zealands-manuka-bees?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/article/2044342/honey-wars-whats-killing-new-zealands-manuka-bees?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 09 Nov 2016 05:30:00 +0000