Te Pūtake

We'll let you know once your Farm Dairy Records are open and available for completion. Just log-on to the Farm Source website and follow the prompts.

Once you’re in your Farm Dairy Records, you’ll be given the option to complete a Co-operative Difference eligible version of the records. The amount of work will be like previous years if you typically complete all the questions.

Improvements have been made, including a new interface in 2025/26 that's easier to follow and enables more data connections.

Workplace360 is an online tool you can complete at any time during the season via the DairyNZ website, as long as it is at least one week prior to your Farm Dairy Assessment.

It’s best if the person employing and managing the staff completes Workplace360 (i.e. the Farm Owner, Sharemilker or Contract Milker where it makes sense).

If you're unsure of any answers, you can come back to your Workplace360 later, but most people will know the information required. To check if you've completed it for a specific year, you can check your farm status via the Farm Source website.

• In 2025/26, Workplace360 will look and feel different. There will be fewer, less complex questions, and you will have more choice in which areas you want to explore. It will only take 20-30 minutes to complete.
• In previous seasons, you've needed to meet 100% achievement for this to count towards the Co-operative Difference. Starting in 2025/26, you'll just need to complete Workplace360 and let us know it has been completed.
• You no longer need to provide evidence of your actual answers - the new Workplace360 is all about you finding out what changes you would like to make on farm, and what you think would be important to aim for.

• You now have the option through the tool to share your completion status directly with us by data connection, so we can tick it off for you. No specific data about your answers will be shared.
• If you choose not to use a data connection, you'll just need to let us know it's completed by uploading it to the Farm Source website.

Workplace360 is about helping you create a productive and positive workplace. It guides you in identifying key employment and health and safety areas on your farm to improve and connects you with tools and resources to support those improvements.

You’ll only need to complete the health and safety requirements section.

You can meet this achievement by one of the following steps:

• Review and confirm the status of the actions in your Farm Environment Plan via the Dairy Diary app
• Request an On-Farm Efficiency Service from your Sustainable Dairying Advisor, and they’ll be able to update your Farm Environment Plan at the same time.

In previous seasons you've been required to have a Farm Environment Plan that meets 3 of 5 criteria to count towards Co-operative Difference.

From 2025/26, you'll just need to keep your plan current by regularly reviewing your Farm Environment actions.

If all actions are up to date and you've already had a service, you will just need to confirm this and it will count towards the Co-operative Difference.

If you have a third-party Farm Environment Plan you'll just need to let us know that you're keeping your actions up-to-date and confirm that no actions are overdue. We'll let you know more about how to do this next season.

We'll need to confirm the area, age and type of vegetation on your farm, and will need your permission to include any claimable carbon in your emissions footprint for 2025/26.

Next season (2025/26) a tool will be available for you to check your vegetation is correct, and for you to give us permission to include it in your footprint if not used elsewhere already.

You can still pass this achievement – you only need to confirm what you do have, and whether it's assigned elsewhere.

You can do this at a vegetation plot level, so you can choose to exclude specific areas of vegetation accounted for elsewhere, while including any remaining vegetation in your Fonterra carbon removals assessment.

We can include any claimable vegetation on any land that you have mapped with Fonterra (both your dairy platform and any attached support land). We'll share more information on non-attached land soon.

No, the carbon benefit from removals will not be passed on to customers via credits. Your removals will be used to lower the footprint of your milk.

• Your farming activity – managing cows, using fertiliser and importing feed – creates emissions, but the vegetation on your farm can store some of the emissions generated.
• Vegetation like trees and shrubs remove carbon dioxide from of the air as they grow and these stored emissions are termed “carbon removals”.
• Through measuring your carbon removals, you can help to grow the value of your milk. Producing low-emissions milk strengthens Fonterra's competitive position and appeal to customers.

New Zealand’s soils generally have high levels of carbon thanks to our rotational grazing system and relatively low percentage of land cultivated/cropped. Natural events like droughts, floods, as well as cultivation and cropping can cause soil carbon to be lost, and there’s still uncertainty about how to fairly account for these changes.

Ongoing research aims to find the best management practices to improve soil carbon and ensure accurate measurement during different conditions.

This plan must be completed within the previous 12 months with your veterinarian, and then checked during your Farm Dairy Assessment. We are working on ways to enable some farmers to share their reports with us via data connection, so we can tick it off for you without the need to show it at your assessment (coming soon).

If you've already got a plan that covers the relevant topics and was issued in the last 12 months, you won't need to request a new one, but you should still have it checked at your assessment.

The relevant topics to cover in your plan are:

• Nutrition: Herd Body Condition, heifer and calf nutrition
• Health: Mastitis, lameness, mortality, antimicrobial resistance, calf health
• Environment: Adverse weather mitigation, heat stress mitigation, calf housing
• Reproduction
• Young stock management

The inclusion of reproduction and young stock management as topics that must be covered within the Animal Wellbeing Plan.

The wellbeing of cows and calves is important to Co-op customers. They increasingly require food producers to demonstrate that animals are healthy, productive, contented and treated with respect throughout their lives.

Good animal health and wellbeing is also important for productivity and reducing wastage on farm. Your Animal Wellbeing Plan helps identify areas where preventative management will benefit your farm and support you meeting your farm goals.

You can complete this via the Farm Source website.

This requirement is the same as last season.

No, each farm must have a standalone record as each farm is different.

Every dairy farm in New Zealand must meet food safety and quality criteria, as required by the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI). This means that we're able to sell food products that consumers can trust are safe and fit for consumption.

It’s a regulatory requirement and helps show that your farm has the right procedures in place to manage risk and ensure milk is safe and of top quality.

Through the Diary Dairy app – select Records, and then Monthly Hygiene Check from the dropdown. You'll then see all months and can add checks there.

You must complete a monthly hygiene check for each month you supply milk.

Monthly hygiene checks help you to proactively prevent grades and ensure high-quality milk. These checks make sure your milk consistently meets food safety regulations, keeping it safe and high quality for export.