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Welcome to this issue of the Rural Leader.
In this issue’s Ideas that Grow Podcast, Julia Galwey, 2020 Kellogg Scholar, talks to Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly managing editor about co-founding Pearl Veal NZ. Julia covers the Pearl Veal development journey from idea to implementation.
Pearl Veal NZ was the winner of the Silver Fern Farms Market Leader Award at the 2023 Beef+LambNZ Awards. Yes, that’s right, the same night Rural Leaders picked up the Rabobank People Development Award.
Applications are closed for the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust Independent Trustee board role. We’ll share who has been selected in the coming weeks.
Rural Leaders have added a new Thought Leadership tab to the existing website. Take a browse.
Phase three of the 50th Kellogg Programme started on Monday. Twenty-five scholars presented their final research to peers, the Rural Leaders’ team and industry partners.
To celebrate this 50th Kellogg Programme’s graduation, an event took place last night at Lincoln University’s new Waimarie building. We share a few shots and news from the evening.
By now you’ll know that the 2024 Nuffield Scholars have been selected. The Scholars come from a diverse range of industries including dairy, red meat, wool, arable, horticulture and agribusiness.
The 2024 Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholars are: Carlos Bagrie, Rachel Baker, Jenna Smith and Peter Templeton.
The Value Chain Innovation Programme ended in Napier just over a week ago. Seven days of back to back visits, discussions and learning, and it left everyone feeling inspired and energised. We share some field notes from the Programme.
In Alumni in the Spotlight, we share news from Jenna Smith and Carlos Bagrie, 2024 Nuffield Scholars and James Allen, Nuffield Scholar, Karen Williams, 2023 Value Chain Innovation Programme, Kate Gower-James, Richard Dawkins and Hamish Murray, Kellogg Scholars.
In this issue’s Rural Reader book review, Dr Patrick Aldwell looks at the ‘A very short introduction’ series, in particular Landscapes and Geomorphology by Andrew Goudie and Heather Viles (2010).
Finally, we share news from our partners and industry.
We hope you enjoy this issue,
The Team at Rural Leaders
Ideas that grow podcast.
Julia Galwey - By-product to buy product: Pearl Veal NZ.
This is an innovation story that covers the journey from an idea to the challenges of development, and to implementation. Julia Galwey, 2020 Kellogg Scholar, talks about Pearl Veal NZ, a new sustainable utilisation of the bobby calf resource.
Pearl Veal NZ was the winner of the Silver Fern Farms Market Leader Award at the 2023 Beef+LambNZ Awards.
Field notes from the 2023 Value Chain Innovation Programme.
Just over two weeks ago a group of people from all across New Zealand came together in Auckland for a week of travel through four key value chains.
And just over a week ago they left Napier with heads buzzing and a rich experience having been shared. An experience that included access to some of the leaders at the heart of our Dairy, Red Meat, Apple and Kiwifruit value chains.
In this article we share some ‘field notes’, from the perspective of a few of the people who were there.
Rachel Baker, was one of the four 2024 Nuffield Scholars on the Programme. We share her post-programme-post. Rachel is a Farmer and Portfolio Manager of MyFarm Investments’ Hawke’s Bay apple syndicates.
Jesamine Wanoa, wrote a post a day while on the Programme and offers her unique perspective as a specialist grower of native NZ plants and owner-operator of Tangikaroro Native Nursery.
Any one of the twenty-two Value Chain Innovation Programme visits seen in isolation, would generate plenty of ‘aha moments’. To run four value chains in their entirety was quite something else. It’s what makes this programme work so remarkably well.
Rural Leaders launch new thought leadership site tab.
The reports and presentation outputs of our alumni are ever more well received by industry. So too, the work we do with partner organisations to help broaden leadership capability.
Recent examples here include the Mackenzie Study (made possible by the Mackenzie Charitable Foundation) and a commission from the Food and Fibre Centre for Vocational Excellence, for research and design of a leadership development ecosystem.
Increasingly we’ve needed to curate, hold and present these outputs in different ways, the Kellogg Scholars’ Series being one example. Each of the three publications produced so far for this series, is a collection of over a dozen Kellogg Scholar reports on just one industry in the sector.
The new tab features four sections: Featured Insights – changes every season. This season being ‘Leadership, culture and people in dairy’. Rural Scholarship – featuring insights from Nuffield Scholars and the mentioned Kellogg Scholars’ Series. Leadership research and design – shown on the image above and featuring research collaborations. And finally, Sector Impact – so far featuring two of an eventual planned library of pieces on programme alumni.
You can check out the new tab here.
Four 2024 Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships awarded.
The 2024 Nuffield Awards Ceremony was hosted by Minister O’Connor and the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust at the Grand Hall in Parliament, Wellington on 7 November.
The new cohort of scholars represent eight or more industries, four regions, and over fifty years’ food and fibre experience.
“This cohort’s combined knowledge and skill range will enable them to hit the ground running and support each other.
We are as interested and excited to see each scholar’s impact on community, industry, and the sector, as we are the collective impact of the cohort”, Said Lisa Rogers, CEO, New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust.
The group’s first scholarship programme component was the fast-paced Value Chain Innovation Programme – for the equally fast-changing food and fibre sector. It ran for a week and finished Saturday 18 November in Napier.
You can read more about the 2024 Nuffield Awards here. And, you can ‘meet the scholars’ here too.
50th Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme graduates.
Phase three of the 50th Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme started on Monday. Twenty-five scholars have presented their final research over four days, to peers, industry and Rural Leaders’ Partners.
The broad areas the presentations fell under were:
– Farming, growing and the environment.
– Future production and processing systems, technology and market opportunity.
– Developing our people in food and fibre.
Just some of the scholars’ final research topics presented over four days included:
– Implications of adopting environmental actions on company profitability.
– Diesel supply chain risk to Canterbury dairy farms and the potential for distributed energy resources to mitigate that risk.
– What change is required to improve strong wool grower returns?
– Options for utilising process mapping in farm consultancy.
Final reports will be shared with our partners before Christmas. We hope to share these more widely in the New Year.
Kellogg 50th cohort - graduation event.
A 50th Kellogg Programme graduation event took place last night at Lincoln University’s new Waimarie building to celebrate Kellogg’s long-running success – and the graduation of the 50th cohort.
Since 1979, Kellogg has built strong foundations for leadership across the primary industries. Dr Patrick Aldwell spoke to about 80 attendees about the Programme’s long history. He’s a man who has a long history with the Programme himself.
Key Kellogg dates.
Programme Two, Lincoln: 11 June – 29 November 2024
Phase One (Lincoln):
Tuesday 11 June – Wednesday 19 June 2024.
Phase Two (Wellington):
Monday 9 September – Friday 13 September 2024.
Phase Three (Lincoln):
Monday 25 November – Friday 29 November 2024.
Applications close Sunday 14 April, 2024.
Apply for 2024’s Programme Two now.
Got a spare 6 minutes? Take a look at our Kellogg Brochure here.
Alumni in the spotlight.
James Allen, Jenna Smith, Carlos Bagrie, Karen Williams, Hamish Murray, Kate Gower-James and Richard Dawkins.
In this issue’s Alumni in the Spotlight, James Allen features in a significant docuseries,
Jenna Smith speaks to The Country, Carlos Bagrie on his Scholarship win (and launching a beer), Karen Williams speaks to ‘black heels and tractor wheels’.
Kelloggers Richard Dawkins and Hamish Murray both have articles in CountryWide and
Kate Gower-James was in Farmers Weekly about her work during Cyclone Gabrielle.
James Allen, 2023 Nuffield Scholar.
James recently featured in a in a video that asks the question ‘Can you use technology to build a deeper connection to the land’. This episode, part of a Bayer mini-docuseries (four parts so far) looks at the relationship between time and technology to deliver new farm innovations.
James’ extensive travel for his Nuffield Global Focus Programme (GFP), found him in the right place and the right time to be part of this series.
“If we are looking at a square meter of crop and we see an insect starting to invade that part of the field, but not another part of the field, all of a sudden we can apply some treatment to here compared to over here where we don’t need to touch it.
All of a sudden, we might be using less product to achieve the same outcome. I think it’s hugely exciting. We’re just scratching the surface of what that could achieve.”
You can check out James’ episode here (scroll to 3.05).
Jenna Smith, 2024 Nuffield Scholar.
Jenna Smith, 2024 Nuffield Scholar, and CEO of Pouarua Farms, spoke to Rowena Duncum on The Country on two Fridays back while on the Value Chain Innovation Programme (somewhere near Napier).
You can check out The Country’s podcast here. (Scroll to 9 minutes 20 sec in).
Carlos Bagrie, 2023 Nuffield Scholar.
Carlos Bagrie’s Nuffield Scholarship win was picked up by a number of news channels, including Queenstown’s Mountain Scene. In the Mid-November piece Carlos described being awarded a Nuffield as ‘life-changing’. You can read the article here.
And, in a collaboration between Carlos Bagrie’s Royalburn Station and Wellington-based brewery Garage Project, the beer ‘Swifty’ was recently released.
Described as a “classic, refreshing and quintessential Kiwi beer”, named after the Swiftburn Stream on Royalburn Station. The launch of the new beer has been widely covered, but we share this week’s article from Queenstown’s Lakes Weekly.
This was a beer Carlos kindly allowed members of the recent Value Chain Innovation Programme to have the first taste of – in the brewery in which it was made.
Richard Dawkins, 2023 Kellogg Scholar.
Recent Kellogg graduate Richard Dawkins completed his programme research on ‘Mortality in lambing systems.’ It was this research that led to a supporting article with CountryWide recently.
Richard’s research sets out the mortality issue and builds a case for addressing it.
He spoke to CountryWide about the need for a culture shift and change in farmer attitude in how we address lamb mortality as well as the need for more research funding.
Hamish Murray, 2022 Kellogg Scholar.
Hamish Murray is a 2022 Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme scholar and Lone Star Farms Operations Manager. His Kellogg research report spoke to the challenge of farmers staying passionate in the face of environmental policy change.
In an article by CountryWide’s Anne Hardie Hamish talks about how farmers want to be heard and to be part of the solution.
The article was first published in earlier this year and you can read it here.
Kate Gower-James, 2023 Kellogg Scholar.
Kate Gower-James exemplifies the spirit and character of the rural leader. She quietly volunteered to help in the clean-up in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle. In fact, Kate pulled together a team of 300 to help in the initial clean-up.
Here is a NZ Herald article, now out from behind the pay wall, on Kate’s effort.
Karen Williams, 2023 Value Chain Innovation Progarmme.
Karen Williams is a Wairarapa farmer with her husband Mick and her teenage children. Karen also works for FMG, and is the past Vice President of Federated Farmers NZ and past Federated Farmers Arable Industry Group Chairperson.
Karen spoke on the ‘Black heels and tractor wheels’ podcast recently about her vision to see agriculture and food production thrive and on her experience in governance.
You can listen to the podcast here, though you’ll need Apple iTunes.
The Rural Reader - Book reviews by Dr Patrick Aldwell.
In this ‘Rural Reader’, Patrick reviews Landscapes and geomorphology – A very short introduction. Andrew Goudie and Heather Viles (2010).
This book, part of a series, is relevant for the food and fibre sector at a time of more intense storms and the damage they do to farm infrastructure.
This series of physically small, concise but useful and readable books, cover all sorts of topics of wider interest.
News from our Partners.
FMG picks up win.
Congratulations to FMG on recently being announced as ANZIIF’s (Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance) General Insurance Company of the Year.
Adam Heath, CEO, shares the latest news from FMG.
Industry News.
AWDT, Checking-in.
Checking-in is a new wellbeing project just launched to support rural people to keep building back from severe weather and other challenges.
It’s centred on a series of community events across the North Island this summer as well as an online tools & tips series for wellbeing resilience.
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