Photo: Michael Godfrey
A vet finding plastic netting in the stomach of a cow was the spur for Southland farmer, Grant Lightfoot, to try to find a better sort of wrapping hay bales.
He turned to flax fibre and he and his partner spent time knitting up 50 metres by hand to try out on one of his baling machines.
It was a success and after some further development, friends urged him to take it to last year's Field Days at Waimumu near Gore, where it won the the environmental award.
He donated his winnings to the Westpac Trust Rescue Helicopter and since then, he says, the phone has run hot with inquiries from around the world and he has travelled to India to get production of Kiwi Econet underway.
Grant Lightfoot joins us from his deer farm at Orepuki, west of Invercargill.
