See my Comment 13 above. I do not think we can rule out effects because of physics. Biology is complicated and we should follow the scientific method and settle this to everyone’s satisfaction through experiments, not by a priori claims about theoretical impossibility.

The amount of energy carried by an individual visible-light photon is ridiculously small. How can less than ten photons (and maybe just one photon) move a 150 pound body 50 feet in one minute? Physically impossible, right? Not if those photons reach a human retina and get amplified into a signal that makes the human take a walk.
https://www.science.org/content/article/human-eye-can-detect-single-photon

The stuff discussed in the article is paid for by the “Our Land and Water National Science Challenge”, which seems to have been set up in 2016 by the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment” with funding of up to $96.9 million over 10 years.

https://www.mbie.govt.nz/science-and-technology/science-and-innovation/funding-information-and-opportunities/investment-funds/national-science-challenges/the-11-challenges/our-land-and-water/

The specific stuff discussed in the article is one of three projects carried out under the heading of “Revitalise Te Taio”. More information than you want to know can be found here:

https://ourlandandwater.nz/project/revitalise-te-taiao/
https://agrisea.co.nz/science-certification/rere-ki-uta-rere-ki-tai/

One would hope that not everything done under the auspices of “Our Land and Water” is complete garbage. It’s entirely typical of the NZ media to focus on the parts that most obviously are.

Hi Chris, it’s taken me about an hour to try and work out the money trail (and please don’t ask me to reproduce it here, because there are at least three levels of bureaucracy involved!), but as best I can tell, the funding originates ultimately from New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment (MBIE).

The funding source is given in the article, and I didn’t investigate further. It doesn’t seem to by the RSNZ, but it is a government source.

They will probably employ a medium to contact her

? NZ’s Head of State is that well known mystic horticulturalist Charles III. His mother HM Elizabeth II is dead.

+1
The small size of the physical influences described does not rule out other possible effects such as you propose. In fact it appears to me that ruling these out entirely might require case by case tests on different crops in different environments. As you say, a well conducted study would be valuable and it’s unfortunate that this one does not seem likely to fill that role.