Nuffield Newsletter Archives

2024 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholarship reports.

Rural Leaders is pleased to be able to share the 2024 Nuffield Scholars’ Individual Research Reports.

Our four 2024 Scholars have undertaken research on a diverse range of topics, each addressing a topical and significant challenges in Food and Fibre, from sustainable land use to succession, and from the future of farming to genetic technology.

The Nuffield Scholarship is about impact – so, we hope you find these reports inspiring and thought-provoking.

We’d like to acknowledge those of you who have contributed your time and experience to the Scholars, a Nuffield Scholarship is after all, a team effort.

This year we have included a one-page summary of each report. You will find these short report summaries via the buttons below.

Carlos Bagrie – Beyond the farm gate: Rethinking New Zealand’s economic future.

Agriculture and tourism in New Zealand face growth limits, threatening export earnings. With global trade shifting and land constraints increasing, we must rethink NZ’s economic future; exploring high-value industries, supply chain control, and innovation.

It’s time to ask: what comes after agriculture and tourism to sustain long-term prosperity?

Rachel Baker – Coding for Change: Navigating adoption of gene editing in the New Zealand primary sector.

Gene editing in New Zealand’s primary sector offers opportunities to address climate change, sustainability, and productivity. Proposed legislation aims to align regulations with trading partners, balancing innovation with public trust.

Early engagement, investment in innovation, and leadership in regulatory frameworks are essential to enhance competitiveness and drive sector growth.

Jenna Smith – Changing the Bog-Standard: Repeatable solutions for Aotearoa’s Peatlands.

Occupying only 1% of Aotearoa’s land yet holding close to a fifth of the nation’s ecosystem carbon, New Zealand’s peatlands are indispensable but rapidly degrading. This report does not offer a silver bullet, but a new way of looking at what we’ve long called marginal land. It suggests that peatlands, when managed well, can be part of our productivity, our identity, and our climate response—not in spite of their wetness, but because of it.

Peter Templeton – Putting the Success back into Succession.

New Zealand’s farm succession faces challenges due to aging farmers, rising land prices, and financial barriers. The report explores alternative models like share-farming and equity partnerships, emphasising the need for early planning, government support, and industry leadership.

Innovative succession pathways are crucial for sustaining the agricultural sector’s future.

Alumni in the Spotlight: James Parsons, Phillip Weir, Vanessa Thomson, Donna Cram, Kylie Leonard, Carlos Bagrie.

Phillip Weir, 2020 Nuffield Scholar.

In February, Nuffield Scholar and Waikato farmer Phillip Weir was appointed an associate board member of the Agricultural and Marketing Research and Development Trust (AGMARDT).

The AGMARDT associate trustee position gives emerging leaders an opportunity to learn, develop and supports AGMARDT’s mission to nurture people and ideas and in putting people at the heart of what it does, while focusing on the things that create the most impact.

In a recent Farmers Weekly article Phillip said, “I’m looking forward to supporting fantastic people who have great ideas that will both change the future of New Zealand Food and Fibre production and will be essential in its future.”

Phillip is also standing for election to Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s Board, Northern North Island region. We’re sure Phillip would appreciate our support.

Phillip and his wife Megan farm dairy-beef bulls and sheep on the side of Mt Pirongia, Waikato.

Phillip’s profile for the voting can be found here.

You can also learn more on how to vote at the B+LNZ contact details below.

Candidate profiles and voting papers should be with voters (from Northern North island voting area) by now as part of the annual meeting voting pack. All registered farmers elsewhere across the country should also have received a meeting pack.

In a recent Farmers Weekly article Phillip said, “We have debt. We have kids. We shift bulls. I am not a professional director. I’m proud of our Ballance Farm Environment Award, my Nuffield Scholarship and industry contributions as Farmer Council Chair.”

About the voting process.

The director election and postal and electronic voting close March 13.
If you’ve previously received annual meeting materials from B+LNZ you’re already on the electoral roll.

However if you’re not sure and want to check, you can:
call B+LNZ on 0800 BEEFLAMB (0800 233 352)
or email enquiries@beeflambnz.com

Vanessa Thomson, 2023 Kellogg Scholar. Donna Cram, 2023 Value Chain Innovation Programme.

Vanessa Thomson, did the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme in 2023 and is a working mum with a young family, who sharemilks with her husband on two farms in the Waikato. She is also an ex-lawyer and currently the contract manager for DairyNZ.

In 2022 Vanessa received a scholarship to the Kellogg Programme through Dairy Women’s Network (DWN) and in a recent interview with DWN said, “It’s been a life-changing opportunity for me, and I am so grateful for the network that I have made through Kellogg, and the tools that it has given me. I am excited for the future, and what my leadership journey might bring.”

Check out the full article here.

Vanessa’s Kellogg research ‘The effectiveness of psychosocial services available to farmers following adverse events’ examined who the stakeholders are in the rural psychosocial ecosystem, how farmers interact with these stakeholders, and how these interact together. The research aimed to understand the challenges of delivery of effective psychosocial services.

In 2023 Donna Cram won the Fonterra Dairy Woman of the Year. Donna chose to use some of the scholarship to attend Rural Leaders’ Value Chain Innovation Programme, instead of the Kellogg Programme.

Donna has said that just as much was learned from the deep, insightful and honest bus and evening meal discussions with other participants on the Value Chain Programme, as from the rural leaders who welcomed them into their businesses.

Applications close soon on 29 February.

More information about the award, click here.

To apply or nominate, click here.

James Parsons, 2008 Nuffield Scholar.

James Parsons is co-owner of Matauri Angus beef stud and the 600 hectare Ashgrove Farm, near Dargaville. He has been trialling Halter collars on breeding cows and heifers for the past three months.

You may have seen James on a recent brand ad for Halter. You can have a look here.

James and his family’s sheep and beef farming business, Ashgrove Ltd, breeds and provides sheep and beef genetics to clients throughout the country. He is also former chairperson of Beef + Lamb New Zealand and is a board member of AgFirst Northland and chair of Wools of NZ.

In a February 19 article in Farmers Weekly, James shared his thoughts on what he sees as a game-changer for hill country farming.

Check out more in the article around cattle adaptability, grazing pressure, and calf growth rates.

Kylie Leonard, 2023 Nuffield Scholar.

Kylie was recently interviewed by the Pathways to Dairy Net Zero initiative (P2DNZ).

Founded in 2021, during Climate Week, P2DNZ is dedicated to reducing dairy’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

P2DNZ is providing insights and solutions to help Kylie overcome any farm challenges and more broadly accelerate climate action throughout the dairy industry.

You can read the interview here.

Carlos Bagrie, 2024 Nuffield Scholar.

Carlos’s innovative and unique approach to farming, the transformation of waste into a viable resource, as well as a few impressive side projects, were the subjects of a not-so-recent interview with REX host Dominic in late December.

Carlos’s energy and passion for what he does is infectious and FYI, his innovation doesn’t stop at zero-waste solutions. There are plenty of great ideas being realised at Royalburn Station with his wife and family. This podcast is well worth a listen – especially if you need a good dose of positivity.

Alumni in the Spotlight. Lucie Douma, 2022 Nuffield Scholar

Lucie Douma and her fellow 2022 Scholars have, or are right now completing their final research reports. Between Nuffield travel and work commitments, Lucie found time to do a webinar for AgriTech New Zealand in early February.

The webinar was called ‘Global AgriFutures Insights – How can NZ respond to overseas trends?’ 

As well as a Nuffield Scholar Lucie Douma, is the Ministry for Primary Industry’s Covid Recovery and Supply Chain Manager.

For the webinar, Lucie drew on her recent travel abroad as part of her Nuffield Scholarship – particularly in North America where food security issues are causing shifts away from food production.

Here’s the full article by Elaine Fisher for Dairy Exporter.

Cyber-attacks, theft of crops, access to water, climate change and labour are among the issues causing some North American farmers and growers to change their land use away from food production.

That was among findings outlined in an AgriTech NZ webinar presented in February by Lucie Douma, 2022 Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholar and Ministry for Primary Industry’s Covid recovery and supply chain manager.

Hosted by Kylie Horomia, community engagement manager for AgriTech New Zealand, the webinar was called Global AgriFutures Insights – How can NZ respond to overseas trends? During the on-line session, attended by rural professionals, Lucie outlined the findings of her recent visits to North America, UK and Europe.

Cyber-attacks had the potential to disrupt the sowing of crops by machinery using GPS navigation in North America’s ‘Corn Belt’. “All the planting is done over an intense three-week period, using GPS so a cyber-attack which disrupted that, would mean a reduction in corn and soy yields.

“The US government is looking closely at how susceptible that industry is to cyber-attacks and how to protect it,” Lucie said.

Some growers of high value crops were employing ex-navy Seals as security guards after cases of cartels moving in at night before harvest, to strip trees of crops like pistachio nuts or harvest cannabis, she said.

By far the biggest threat was lack of water, especially in California, which is the USA’s largest producer of food, growing two thirds of North America’s nuts and one third of its fresh vegetables.

However, its climate was changing, and Lucie said access to water is of increased concern. “I spent time in the San Joaquin Valley which is an important food and grape growing area.

“The region, which is in a flood plain, does not get a lot of rain but does get a lot of fog close to the coast. Growers rely on water from snow melt in the Sierra Nevada Ranges. Snow forms giant reservoirs, providing water when it slowly melts but, partly because of the forest fires in the mountains and climate change, snow is not settling and is melting a lot quicker than usual.

“The region has experienced three years of drought and how to manage water is a major issue. Each county within California manages its own water allocation in an individualistic approach which doesn’t account for growers further down the supply.

“Up to 40% of the land is flood irrigated with river water. One of the reasons is to recharge the land but there’s an economic reason too as it could cost up to $US400 more per acre for mechanical irrigation. However, flood irrigation is not a good way to manage water, with much of it evaporating.”

Lucie said water restrictions were among the reasons some growers, including Woolf Farms, were converting some of their land to other uses. “Woolf Farms, which has 25,000 acres of land and grows tomatoes and almonds, is moving to non-food crops, carbon sequestration and solar energy.”

Among the options are drought-tolerant crops such as agave, the feedstock for products like tequila and mezcal. Woolf Farms also has plans to convert former cropland to solar installation. Lucie says the company was not alone in seeking alternatives to high-cost food production.

“Stuart Woolf thinks that in the next few years, he will stop growing on 30 to 40% of his land. If this happens on scale in California, some figures show that in the next few years up to one tenth of the land or half a million acres will not be used for food production by 2040.”

That posed a huge food security threat for North America and ways to address it included vertical farming under which crops grow in vertically stacked layers, often in controlled environments and soilless techniques such as hydroponics.

Lucie saw similar trends in energy and food farming in the Netherlands where wind and solar generators are interspaced alongside crops.

There were however, marked differences in public attitudes to farmers and farming between North America, UK and Europe.

“In North America people are proud of farmers and farming and the quality of food produced. Some restaurants even showcase food from specific regions with the provenance stories of where it is produced and by who.”

In Europe, including the Netherlands and UK, the impact of Covid isolation, social media and tv channels like Netflix showing a one-sided aspect of farming, had had a huge impact on public perception.
“Many farmers are not proud to be farming any more. They don’t want their children going into farming and are planning exit strategies which is sad to see.

“In the UK there has been a big rise in activism with environmental, vegan and animal welfare groups sharing resources to have a powerful impact on public perception. We saw something of that in New Zealand with activist group slashing tyres of people driving utes.

“In New Zealand we need to support our farmers and growers who are under a lot of pressure including from water challenges and adverse weather events.”

Labour costs and supply were issues common to New Zealand, California, Scotland and Europe Lucie said. The availability of cheap labour had been impacted by the Covid pandemic and in Scotland, also by Brexit, where farmers were now relying on a domestic labour force, which often proved unreliable.

This had added impetus to the need for innovation, including robotic harvesting and this was an area New Zealand tech companies could benefit from, she said.
However, New Zealand tech companies should not try to ‘go it alone’. Her recommendation was to work globally and build relationships with other countries and tech companies to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world.

Lucie said New Zealand should focus on producing high quality, premium foods for the world, rather than compete in the commodity space. She also believed the dairy and meat industry had a strong future.

“It’s my personal view that animal farming is not a sunset industry. Its future is as a niche industry in the premium space. People may not be able to afford to eat meat every day, but meat will not go away. Humans have eaten meat ever since we were on the planet.”

California’s Top 10 Agricultural Commodities

California produces more than 400 commodities, accounting for a third of the country’s vegetables and three-quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts. California’s top 10 valued commodities for the 2021 crop year were:

Dairy Products, Milk — $7.57 billion
Grapes — $5.23 billion
Almonds — $5.03 billion
Cattle and Calves — $3.11 billion
Strawberries — $3.02 billion
Pistachios — $2.91 billion
Lettuce — $2.03 billion
Tomatoes — $1.18 billion
Walnuts — $1.02 billion
Rice — $1.00 billion

(Source: California Department of Food and Agriculture)

Dr Scott Champion – Seeing beyond the boundary fence: Strategic leadership development for Food and Fibre now.

Listen to "Dr Scott Champion – Seeing beyond the boundary fence: Strategic leadership development for food and fibre now." on Spreaker.

Dr Scott Champion has a wealth of sector knowledge, gained not just from tenures at the top of organisations such as Beef+LambNZ, but from possessing a genuine passion for helping our rural leaders grow.

As Facilitator and Programme Director of the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, Scott plays a vital role lifting rural leadership capability.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

Welcome to the ‘Ideas that Grow’ podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. With me today is Dr Scott Champion, who is the programme leader for Kellogg. G’day, Scott. How’s it going?

Scott Champion – Facilitator and Programme Director of the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme

Yeah good thanks Bryan. Great to be with you.

Bryan: We often talk to the scholars themselves about their individual research projects, but with the Kellogg Programme, you’re in charge of running the programme as a whole. How long have you been with Rural Leaders?

Running the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme – what’s involved.

Scott: I’ve been running the programme for about five years now and had actually spoken at the programme as a guest speaker prior to that. So it’s been a real delight to be involved over the last five years. And it’s a programme now that’s been going for close on 50 years and has put through over 1000 graduates in that time.

Bryan: What’s involved in running the programme? Obviously, there’s attracting people to get involved, there’s organising their meetings and get-togethers and what they’re going to study and marking assignments. What else is there?

Scott: The focus really, from my time as course director, is on the face to face interaction and the way we connect between what we call phases. So the programme itself is divided into three of these phases.

The Kellogg Programme’s three phases – Phase One.

Scott: The first one is nine days long, second one is five days long, and then the third one is five days long. So they’re quite intense, particularly that first phase, across the nine days. So we run two programmes a year.

Each programme has about 24 participants. Sometimes it’s a little bit less, sometimes it’s a little bit more. And the focus in each of those, really the nine day intense phase one, is all about getting to understand concepts of leadership. Where also we use the analogy of a toolbox. We’re trying to give our Kellogg participants tools that they can use to go out and be more effective and contribute both into their own businesses or the business that they work in, but also in the sector more broadly.

We think about things like presentation skills, leadership models, and tools. And then also in that first phase, we’re trying to introduce them into aspects of the different components of the broader food and fibre sector that they might not be aware of.

For example, if you work in Horticulture, giving you an opportunity to understand what are the big picture issues that are happening in dairy and vice versa across that sort of plethora of industries that are operating in New Zealand. So that’s our focus around phase one.

Kellogg Phase Two.

Phase two is completely different. We come to Wellington, so I should say phase one and phase three are both typically held at Lincoln.

We come to Wellington for phase two, and that’s all about the economy, politics, and concepts of influence, models of government communications, the role of media, things like that.

Kellogg Phase Three.

Then in phase three, we come back to Lincoln again. I think you might have mentioned earlier, the Kellogg Scholars are undertaking a project through the five or six months that they’re on the Kellogg Programme and that’s on a topic of their own choosing.

It’s quite a significant piece of work and they’re presenting those back to the group. We also get some industry people coming along to those presentations and then we tie the programme together. So that’s the broader structure across the five or six months of the Kellogg Programme.

Bryan: So someone turning up, as a newly minted Kellogg Scholar, and that first phase one, those nine days, it’s sort of full on workshops and a lot of listening and a lot of talking, and you bring together people from all around the Sector, and all around the country into that?

What to expect on Kellogg.

Scott: Absolutely. We’re deliberately trying to do that and to get a real mix of different industries. So one of the things we’re trying to do is expose people beyond the boundaries of their day to day and give them an opportunity to think more broadly. So that’s pretty important to us.

It’s really interesting when you talk to the Kellogg Scholars at the end of the programme about what’s been most valuable. One of the things that they often talk about is the fact that they got to understand things outside the boundaries of the industry they typically work in.

What many of these people will do is they’ll be in that transition from technical roles to general management and focusing more on people and managing teams and those sorts of things. So creating that broader understanding and giving them an opportunity to think beyond their technical skill set is one of the things that we’re really trying to do. But the first nine days is quite full on. It’s a real immersion.

One of the things we try to do is have lots of speakers coming to present. We might have Chairs or CEOs or Directors, quite senior people from around the sector and make sure in those sessions we’re opening up lots of time for discussion and Q and A. It’s not just that monologue from the front.

One of the things I always say, is at the start of phase one, that you’re going to learn as much from one another as you do from those that you hear presenting at the front of the room.

The Kellogg Final Research Project.

Bryan: Do people applying to be Kellogg Scholars have an idea in mind of what they’re going to do their project on, or are those formed as the programme goes forward?

Scott: I guess the answer to that question is yes and no. So we do get Kelloggers to think about their project topic prior to joining us in Phase One. We kicked off a couple of weeks ago, and we actually ran a video conference prior to the start of the face to face programme to give them an opportunity to get more information on the nature of their projects, to do a bit of thinking about what they wanted to focus on when they came into Phase One.

Some of the conversations we have around project topics happen here. But often what people do is they’ve got a broad idea of the area that they want to work in, but as they get exposed to some of the content in Phase One, even as we head sometimes towards phase two, they’ll refine the topic, narrow it down, and get more focus. I think the answer, Bryan, is yes, they do. But often the interactions with one another, the interactions with the content, will help refine that and give it a real impact as they go through the programme.

Bryan: I’ve interviewed 20 or 30 of the Rural Leaders Scholars and a number of them said to me, I had what I thought was a fantastic idea for the project and after sitting through this or talking to one of my fellow Scholars, I realised that my angle was wrong and it went this way – and it was much better for it.

Scott: Absolutely. And you’re right, that’s often a point of feedback, and we talked about that at the start, just saying, this is probably going to happen and that’s fine. Be aware that your topic might change and shift a bit as you go through and you learn more and you start to think about things from other perspectives you might not have been exposed to before.

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme and the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarship. What are the differences?

Bryan: Maybe it may not be clear to some, but what is the difference between a Kellogg and a Nuffield Scholarship?

Scott: Sure, it’s a great question which we get asked all the time. They’re quite different programmes. So the Nuffield Programme is a year-long experience. It’s individually directed.

The Nuffield Scholars are really focusing on a project topic and then designing their own experiences – gathering information and data as they write the report. So there’s a report that comes out of a Nuffield Scholarship as well. They design that themselves in conjunction with the trust and mentors that they’ve put together. Obviously, travel is a big component of a Nuffield. So going offshore, immersing in other agri-contexts is a really key part and has always been a key part of Nuffield.

The Kellogg Programme is six months long and more structured in the sense that we are running the phases I described previously. Where we have content that we’re putting in front of Kelloggers and getting them to think about and interact with. And their project is obviously shorter in duration and more compact in terms of what’s required. So Kellogg is more structured and shorter.

Scott: They’re different rather than staircasing one way or the other. In fact, recently we’ve had someone who had previously done a Nuffield Scholarship, come back and do the Kellogg Programme. There have been a number of people who’ve done Kellogg Programmes and then gone on to do Nuffield Scholarships. So, different in scope and focus, and I guess, the degree of self-direction that there is in them.

What academic support is available to Kellogg Scholars?

Bryan: I guess there are lots and lots of people in the food and fibre sector who would get really excited about leadership training and being in the room with all these people. They might be a bit daunted by the sort of academic aspect of putting together a large project. Is there support for that and how academic are they? How does that work?

Scott: There is support, absolutely. So I’m really fortunate to have a colleague, Dr Patrick Aldwell, who was previously one of the Deans at Lincoln. Patrick is involved in the programme. He was the Course Director prior to me and he still looks after the project component. Patrick’s enormously experienced in the sector, but also in terms of just how do you do a really good piece of research?

One of the things we say to our Kellogg Scholars is, look, you might not have done one of these before, and actually, you might not have to do another report like this again.

If you think about the core skillset that we’re trying to encourage you to experience and build into your toolkit, it’s about how do you identify a really great problem?

How do you define a solid research question or a problem definition around that?

How do you go out and collect data and talk to people and assemble information to analyse that? And then, how do you craft a really compelling response to what it is that you’ve been working on over the last six months and to respond to that research question?

If you can generalise those skills, they can be used in a really significant array of different contexts, whether that’s a family, farming or growing business. Whether that’s working with a bunch of colleagues, whether that’s reporting up to a management team, a senior leadership team, or a board. That logic and argument is something we’re really trying to give people an opportunity to experience.

Yes, lots of support, and I think, as we say, even if you haven’t done it before, and even if you’re not doing it again, there are really core skills here about logic and how you create really compelling arguments to have impact and influence as well.

Kellogg Programme Director Scott Champion – background.

Bryan: Now, you yourself have a background in academic study, and you’ve been at the top of industry good groups in New Zealand. Tell us a little bit about how your journey to where you are now.

Scott: As you can probably tell, I’m an Australian from the accent, which hasn’t faded. I’ve been here for about 20 years now, so I’m a city kid who did agriculture, sort of stumbled across agriculture when I was trying to work out what I wanted to do when I finished school.

I’ve just had a really wonderful professional career and opportunities to date. I love the broader food and fibre sector and have had fabulous experiences here in New Zealand. I did an undergraduate degree at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and it’s actually a programme that doesn’t exist anymore. It was called Wool and Animal Science. It had a sort of a textile component – as well as an Ag component.

My technical background is in wool and I then did a PhD in Animal nutrition and ended teaching after that in the School of Agriculture at the University of Tasmania in Hobart.

The school had lots of really close connections with industry and Tasmania’s economy was a lot like New Zealand’s. Very food and fibre dependent. I was teaching Animal Nutrition and Physiology and Introduction to Ag and Hort. I did that for six years.

New Zealand and the path to Kellogg.

Scott: I then came across here to New Zealand to work for the New Zealand Merino Company, as Research, Development and Product Innovation Manager. I had four and a half years there. Again, wonderful experience working with a great bunch of people who were doing interesting things and really trying to think about Merino fibre in a different way and that tight connection to growers.

Then I went to the industry body, which was then Meat and Wool New Zealand, which then became Beef+LambNZ. I had ten years there. I had a GM role, looking after policy and promotion, and then the last seven and a half years as CEO.

Then almost seven years ago now, we started a little consulting practise called Primary Purpose. There are three of us in the business. We describe ourselves as sort of a niche research, advisory and analytics firm, working across food and fibre in New Zealand.

So, yeah, we work across all of the sort of major industries and then for about probably a quarter to a third of my time, is the Kellogg work. So it’s a lovely mix.

Bryan: Now, having led Beef+LambNZ for quite a long time and then being away from it for a while, what are your thoughts on the industry group’s advocacy efforts in the last few years and do you think the criticism of them is valid?

Common challenges beyond the boundary fence.

Scott: I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately having had a number of conversations with people, that in my time, so almost seven years ago I left, a lot of the focus was around productivity improvement.

In my time with Beef and Lamb, I think from memory, it was the 2006/2007 season, was sort of the worst year in 50 years in real terms for profitability in the sheep and beef sector.

So that’s, how do we stay profitable as individual farming businesses and how do we stay in the game? The challenges around that was a real theme that ran through my time there. One of the things that really strikes me now is, we look at the dominant conversations that hit the front pages of your publications, and we talk about them in the Kellogg Programme too.

There are these big cross sector issues around environment, animal welfare, social licence and all of the different components of that. How do we maintain that social licence with the public onshore and offshore in our export markets to continue to be able to export and deliver the products that people want?

It’s a really significant shift. The boundaries of the problems now and the things that we talk about, they don’t line up with the boundaries of an individual business. They don’t stop at an individual farm or an orchard’s fence line. How you deal with that is quite challenging. The ability of the sectors to work with one another and operate with one another, I think is really critical.

We’ve seen various models and approaches like that developed over the last while. That feels like it’s quite different to what it was ten years ago, 15 years ago, in terms of what’s required, in terms of focus, but also at an individual farm and business level. Of course, there’s still the requirement to make those individual productivity improvements and to focus on the business and stay in the game.

So one of the things that has been pretty challenging, both for individual businesses, and for the service sector and also for the industry bodies, is it’s an ‘and’ conversation as well as supporting individual businesses to continue to improve. We have to connect across the sector to address these big cross sector issues as well. So it’s a pretty full agenda.

Gaining perspectives on the sector’s big challenges with Kellogg.

Bryan: I think that point you made about these issues being far wider than the boundary fence is quite important, because I almost feel that if more in the industry did the Kellogg Programme, they’d realise at the moment, a lot seem to take the ‘my farm’ attitude to an all of world issue.

Whereas if you had a more holistic view of what consumers are feeling overseas, the social licence position in New Zealand, then there would be a different perspective on things.

Scott: Yes. I think one of the responses we often get, and we run a little activity on the last day of the Kellogg Programme with a conversation about what was most valuable to you as you’ve gone through the programme. One of the responses we’ll often get from participants is ‘I got insights into other sectors beyond my own and I learnt that I can generalise and they’re actually dealing with many of the same issues that I am’.

So the context might be different if I go from horticulture, to dairy, to sheep and beef, to forestry, whatever it might be. But if I push that level up, that issue up, and think about it at a slightly more strategic level, there are really similar things here that we’re trying to grapple with.

I think when you do that, it does give you opportunity to connect with others, to get different insights, to think about things in different ways.

So, in terms of the context of the Kellogg Programme, what we’re trying to do with our 50 or so Scholars each year, is to get them to think about ‘how do I look across to other sectors and other places and beyond the boundaries of food and fibre as well other things going on in tech or manufacturing or whatever it might be.

Where I go, the context is a bit different, but actually, there’s an analogy there. There’s something I could really learn from that. I think about how to adapt it. I might be able to bring it back into my own context and do something a bit better, or a bit faster, or with a bit more impact, or whatever.

The Kellogg Programme in 2023.

Bryan: All right, so two and intakes a year into the Kellogg Programme. So I guess you’ve got another cohort kicking off mid-year, is that right?

Scott: Yeah, sometimes three intakes, but that’s right. We kicked off our last programme two or three weeks ago, last week of January, first week of February. That programme goes through to July, and actually we start our second programme of the year just before we finish our first programme of the year. So we’ll have a programme running from mid-June through to the end of November. Applications are closing, I think about 16 April, for that second programme of the year.

Bryan: So anyone interested can get all the details on the Rural Leaders website, I guess?

Scott: Absolutely. If they go and have a look at the Rural Leaders website, they’ll see some blue coloured links there through into the Kellogg Programme, and that will give them all the details.

Thanks for listening to ‘Ideas that Grow’ the Rural Leaders Podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, and Agmardt. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

Kate Scott: Meeting food and fibre’s challenges, together.

Listen to "Kate Scott - Meeting food and fibre's challenges, together." on Spreaker.

Kate Scott is a 2018 Nuffield Scholar and Chair of the Board of the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust and is part of the team behind Forefront: 2023 Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit and its line up of speakers and panelists.

Pulling together a speaker ensemble of this calibre has been no easy task, but as Kate explains the chance to bring industry together for one day – makes the effort well worthwhile.

Forefront, the Summit theme, will focus on those businesses making change now – those providing solutions to the sector’s and the world’s biggest agribusiness challenges and opportunities.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. And with me I have my first repeat visitor to the podcast, Kate Scott. How’s it going?

Kate Scott – 2018 Nuffield Scholar and Chair of the Board of Rural Leaders.

I’m good. Thank you, Bryan. And yourself?

The 2023 Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit - Together for a day.

Bryan: Yeah, really good. So, today we’re here to talk about the upcoming Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit, which is at the Christchurch Town Hall on the 27 March. Kate, you’ve been involved in putting this together.

Kate: Yes, I have. There’s a great team of people have been working hard to bring not only the one-day, Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit together, but also the Nuffield Triennial Conference together too.

We started planning this event back in 2020, but we were a casualty of Covid like many events. And so, we’re now looking forward to March when we can host our Summit. It’s going to be amazing to not only welcome some of our international guests who will be attending the as part of their involvement with the Nuffield Triennial, but also really looking forward to getting a broad and diverse range of New Zealand farmers, agribusiness and rural professionals along to hear our great line up speak at the Agribusiness Summit.

Bryan: Now, when we talked a while back, your [Nuffield] research was on the evolution of New Zealand farming into a more sustainable place and I guess that’s something that’s going to be a focus of the [Summit] day, isn’t it?

Challenges and opportunities in a fast-changing world.

Kate: Yeah, it is. And it will probably be of interest to some of the listeners that we’ve chosen to theme our conference for the day ‘Forefront’.

The reason behind choosing Forefront was about not only getting in front of all the challenges that the primary sector are facing, but also looking at it through a lens of opportunity.

How can we be at the front of this change and find ways to innovate and take advantage of a changing world? I guess that’s then gone on to help us to create the speaker themes for the conference.

Summit day themes and speakers – Our World.

Kate: We’ve split the day into three broad topic areas. The first is taking a more global picture. It’s called Our World. Here we’re talking about some of those big challenges in our natural environment.

We’ve got some speakers touching on climate change. Doctor Harry Clark will share his incredible breadth of knowledge [on climate change] with us.

We’ve got a speaker talking to us about the role of solar, particularly from a farming perspective – a woman by the name of Karin Stark. Karin and her husband farm in Australia. She’s done a lot of work using solar energy and developing solar panels within their farming business and how they integrate that more generally. So that’s going to be an interesting part of that first Our World theme.

Then we also have a speaker talking about the opportunity the sea brings and how we utilise our oceans as a resource and as an opportunity to grow our primary sector.

Summit day themes and speakers – Our People.

Kate: Then we move into our second, which is Our People. That will look at consumer trends and trade. I guess we’ve seen a massive shift in international trends and how that’s changed over the last few years, particularly on the back of COVID and what other trends might emerge around the agrifood and the consumer side of things.

So, to help us to understand both the challenges and the opportunities there, we have Vengalis Vitalis who many of you will know as our Deputy Secretary of Trade here in New Zealand. He’ll be talking about a global view of trade from a New Zealand perspective.

We have Lain Jager joining us to talk about what the role of future food and genetic modification might mean for food production in New Zealand. Then we’ve also got Emma Parsons from Fonterra who’s going to be talking to us about what Fonterra see from that consumer trends and trade perspective. Already a great line-up of speakers.

Summit day themes and speakers – Our Future.

Kate: Our last session for the day is called Our Future. We’re wanting to try to change that up a little bit. So, we’ve got four or five speakers who are going to talk for a shorter period of time – a little bit snappier – talking about all those opportunities around entrepreneurship, leadership, the future, social, economic and environmental wellbeing.

We have Traci Houpapa talking to us about future leadership and a Te Ao Maori perspective – and possible new business models. We have Angus Brown from Arepa, Mark McLeod Smith from Halter, and we also have Dr Ellen Nelson, who will be talking to us about the future of work.

I’ve just given you a big download of the programme! But it’s exciting to have a broad range of topics and people to be able to come together to look at our sector in a positive light. To take some motivation and opportunity to challenge what we’re doing, look for what’s new and the what next? for our sector.

Bryan: It’s great that with the world opened up again, getting some of these global perspectives on the shared challenges that agriculture faces. Some of those people will be in the room. Sometimes these changing consumer perceptions, along with the ins-and-outs of trade deals and that sort of thing, sometimes is second hand knowledge to a lot of the agricultural community here – so it’s good to get a view from the ground, but a different ground.

Devry Boughner Vorwerk - Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit Keynote Speaker.

Kate: Exactly. I think it’s an integral part of what we do, but unless we’re actively doing it, it’s almost one of those back-end functions. We don’t always think about these things if we’re down on the farm driving our tractor or milking our cows.

To that point, our keynote speaker is a woman by the name of Devry Boughner Vorwerk. Devry is coming out to see us from the States and she has amazing background in terms of having been Chief Communications Officer and Global Head of Corporate Affairs at Cargill.

She has her own sustainability entrepreneurship business and is going to be talking big picture setting for us around international business and development. She’s going to be able to do an amazing job of setting the scene initially and then helping us to draw in all the pieces of the puzzle as we hear from our other speakers throughout the course of the day.

Bryan: I did some reading on her earlier in the week and sounds like she’s going to bring some real amazing insight. I mean, Cargill is one of the biggest meat producers in the United States – and then she moved to, I think, Grubhub for a while, didn’t she?

Kate: That’s my understanding as well. And then having done both that policy side of things and the international business, I’m really looking forward to hearing Devry speak. The fact that she’ll be able to join us in person is really a good outcome given only a few years ago we were having to cancel the Summit.

Bryan: In that last session too, when we talk about challenges, quite rightly, I guess people often see that as cost and loss of opportunity. But in fact, there are people out there capitalising on meeting those challenges and there’s going to be some real-world examples of how you can do that.

Kate: Listeners may have heard of Ellen Nelson through her role in helping to secure places for the Afghani refugees last year. Ellen has done a world of research into the way in which we work. She challenges us to think about can we look at the world with ‘can we work school hours’?

Ellen has some interesting insights on how we leverage a lot of our mums and dads who might want to actually be able to work different hours, and how do we do that within our farming business? So, a slightly different perspective, but one that is as applicable to agriculture as any other sector.

Open to farmers, growers, agribusiness professionals and anyone who cares about the future of food and fibre.

Bryan: So, what sort of people are you hoping to attract?

Kate: We’re open to all comers, but we’re keen to make sure that our on-the-ground farmers have the opportunity to attend. I guess one of the reasons we decided to make the Summit a one-day event was that we know how difficult it is for people to get off their farm for too long. We’re wanting our farmers to come. We’ve had a great number of registrations already, as you’d expect.

We’ve got a bunch of our agribusiness representatives from our food companies, from other consultancies, we’ve got bankers, we’ve got some of our more senior leaders from government organisations. A real cross section of our sector. I think that’s where we’re trying to go – that the more views and perspectives we can get in the room, the greater the conversation and the questions.

One of the key things that we wanted to be able to do through the Summit was to provide the platform for a safe and robust conversation, where when you break out from morning tea, you can pick up one of these interesting topics that we would have heard about, talk to some people about their views and get the conversation going.

So, trying to kickstart the conversations on some of these big topics.

Bryan: And of course, everything will be kept on time, on track and on message from some pretty cool people running the show.

Bringing the Summit to life and the sector together.

Kate: Yes, we have got Corin Dann, an experienced journalist most will probably have heard of through the National Program – on breakfast in the mornings. Corin has very kindly agreed to come and facilitate our sessions for the day. A big part of the sessions will be the panel discussions and the conversations.

At the end of the day, we’re going to have a wrap up session where we get Devry back on stage with our other guests and Corin, to have an in-depth conversation around what’s happening, what the future looks like and the opportunities.

[From] the back end, the chair of the Summit, Murray King, and a small committee of volunteers will all be working hard in the to make sure people are well fed and well-watered, and that everything is kept to time.

For those who haven’t been to an event at the Town Hall in Christchurch before, one of the highlights is always the food. They do a great job there of showcasing local produce – they try to support their local Canterbury growers. The food is also something that’s always good to look forward to in those events.

Bryan: The building itself is something quite special. It’s such a wonderful piece of architecture.

Kate: It is iconic, so it’s great.

Bryan: And there’s a dinner.

The Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit Dinner.

Kate: Yes, we have a dinner that will be hosted after the Summit. So, there are still some tickets available for that, although they are selling out very fast. The dinner will allow people to come together and to take the conversation to that next step. We will also be joined at the dinner by Minister O’Connor, who is going to be speaking. And we have some evening entertainment from Te Radar.

Another exciting part of the Summit is that it will include our international Nuffield guests who are actually going to be here in New Zealand as part of a ten day conference – where we kick off on the Saturday or the Friday night actually, prior to the Summit. It’s a bit of a traveling trip from Canterbury all the way [down the South Island] and finishing in Queenstown the following weekend. So, it’ll be a great opportunity to connect with a wide audience from around the globe.

Bryan: Excellent. Well, that sounds [like] something for everyone to think about attending. How do people go about getting tickets if they’re interested?

Kate: Yeah, go and have a look on the Rural Leaders website. There’s a big headline that flashes up that says Forefront. Click on that to head to the registration page to attend the Summit and/or the Dinner.

Click here to visit Forefront Summit page for more details.

Rebecca Hyde – Collaboration, cooperation and finding the common ground.

Rebecca Hyde - Ideas that grow podcast interview

Listen to "Rebecca Hyde: Collaboration, cooperation and finding common ground." on Spreaker.

Ideas That Grow: Rebecca Hyde, 2017 Nuffield Scholar and 2021 Kellogg Scholar

Lynsey Stratford has discovered farmers make a few assumptions that aren’t very helpful – like accepting the fact that work might be dangerous and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. As Lynsey explains, “There are changes we can make, but those assumptions and those mindsets have been deeply held for quite some time.”

As a consultant, Lynsey helps the primary sector with people management and development services and training. And, when it comes to health and safety she says, “We shouldn’t expect people to just know this stuff, but rather teach them and support them as they develop skills.”

Lynsey’s research report unpacks the paradox that while farmers care about their people, farms as workplaces are overrepresented in fatal accident and injury statistics. So, what can be done to improve this?

Bryan Gibson – Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

I’m Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly Editor. And with me today I have Rebecca Hyde.

Rebecca Hyde – 2017 Nuffield Scholar and 2021 Kellogg Scholar, Oxford, North Canterbury.

Thanks, Bryan.

Bryan: So, where are you calling in from?

Rebecca: I’m based at Oxford in North Canterbury.

Bryan: And what keeps you busy down there?

Working with Catchment Groups.

Rebecca: I’m a Farm Environment Consultant, so I spend a lot of my time dealing with farmers and actually at the moment I’m working predominantly with a catchment group. It’s great to be dealing with farmers in the same area and focusing on the catchment within that region.

Bryan: And with catchment groups, it’s a system that really seems to be working quite well in a lot of places.

Rebecca: Yes, it is. What I’m enjoying about it is you’re getting a good idea of what farmers are really facing, the challenges within the catchment or sub-catchments, and then you’re able to be quite tailored and specific to those areas. So, you see a lot of common themes coming through when you’re talking to farmers in the same area, which then allows you to be quite specific and help the catchment group or farmers in the best way possible, all working together.

Bryan: Yes, and all for positive outcomes, really, isn’t it?

Rebecca: Yes, absolutely.

Nuffield research into collaboration.

Bryan: Now that kind of works in quite nicely with your Nuffield Scholarship, doesn’t it? Because you looked at collaboration for environmental gains.

Rebecca: Correct, yes. So actually, the catchment group I’m now working on, we’ve had an MPI funded project for the last two-and-a-half years, but that was established back in 2016. It came off the back of a plan change for the Hurunui District Landcare Group. It was a plan change for the Hurunui regional area. It was through that the collaboration or collaborative process was being worked through.

At that time, I was working across other areas in Canterbury, but they had the zone groups set up and the word collaboration kept coming up a lot. It was often used in the frames of how do we collaborate better, or why aren’t we able to collaborate on this? So, this word continued to come up and at the time I was involved in a few other things with Beef+LambNZ as well, and I thought, well, what’s happening globally and how can we better understand this? So that was really a key trigger for me to look at Nuffield.

Same, same but different.

Bryan: So what did you find when you went around the globe looking at this issue?

Rebecca: I looked at a lot of places within land use, but also outside of it. I met with some people in Silicon Valley, for example, because collaboration isn’t something that’s unique to agricultural land-based activities, it is something that is right across the board. What I found was there was often a common good or a common purpose, that people were trying to achieve.

The other thing that was common was that often there was sort of a burning platform, so some decisions were needing to be made and that was where collaboration was being used. But the other thing that stood out quite a lot was the word collaboration gets used regularly or often, but it might be partnership or cooperation that might be needed.

It’s understanding how you’re needing to work together and then working in the most appropriate way. There are some key differences between, say, a partnership, collaboration, and cooperation. So even though they’re just words, there is quite a difference there.

Bryan: Yeah, I guess in some ways people might need to work together to reach a singular goal and in other cases there are people doing the same thing who could get efficiencies if they work together.

Rebecca: Exactly. So, for example, cooperation might be working together for those efficiencies, but you’re working in isolation still. Whereas collaboration really is about coming together for a common good. So, let’s say you’re a catchment group with some dairy farmers and sheep and beef farmers and maybe some Iwi there as well – you might be all representing your certain areas, but once you start collaborating, it’s about that mutually beneficial area.

Let’s say a water body, that becomes the key purpose as opposed to what you might have been representing. That’s often where we get it a bit wrong because we’re still strongly aligned to what we were representing. It’s a change of focus.

Bryan: I guess if you bring other stakeholders into a situation, then what success looks like changes, doesn’t it? Because you’re sort of ticking boxes that you wouldn’t have ticked on your own.

The foundations of successful collaboration.

Rebecca: The other thing too is that is quite time consuming – collaboration. One thing I noticed was where there were some good examples of it abroad, a lot of time put into building the relationships, the understanding, getting on that common ground.

Often in New Zealand we were just rushing through that foundation piece and then with human nature, we’re very good at focusing on what you don’t agree on rather than what you do agree on.

We tend to get into the stuff we don’t agree on a bit too soon because that sort of foundational trust and understanding is not there yet. That was one of the key things we saw when it was successfully happening – there was a good base understanding of what was all agreed on and then sort of reflecting back on it as well. Like, are we still on the same track? Are we still trying to achieve the same goal? Has the goal changed? Because things can change when you start a project. It’s that conscious effort of reflecting and reviewing on the process.

Bryan: Is it just a matter of taking the time and getting an understanding of all the players involved? Or are there frameworks or structures you can put in place to help you along the way? Or both?

The importance of neutral facilitation.

Rebecca: Yeah, both. The other thing too was having someone that can facilitate it. A couple of examples that I saw where the facilitator worked effectively – they had government backgrounds, so they had been quite familiar about how the structure works within government. These were in areas like environmental regulation so that facilitator knew what needed to be bundled up to get it back to government.

They were very neutral with the parties that they were all dealing with. Having that person as neutral as possible in that Facilitation process – that was something that I observed coming back home. I’m just talking about the Environment Canterbury (ECAN) examples that I was dealing with at the time. But the Facilitators were often ECAN staff members, so they weren’t neutral in the process. There again, that trust piece wasn’t quite there with the stakeholders. The person that’s trying to pull together everyone’s thoughts and help with the direction of the group is pretty key as well.

Bryan: Catchment groups seem to work because you have the common goal. You have support from people who are like you, and they face the same challenges. You also have that kind of almost friendly competition thing going on. You don’t want to be the one who’s not doing the work, I guess. Is that fair?

Rebecca: Are you meaning like peer pressure?

Bryan: Sort of, yeah.

The strengths of Catchment Groups.

Rebecca: Yes but hopefully in a positive way. We’ve noticed that in the project that I’m working on now in the Hurunui, we’re doing a one-on-one approach. We’ve found that once we got to that critical mass, there were farmers that were just wanting to be involved because everyone else was and they didn’t want to be the odd ones out.

There’s absolutely that effect that catchment groups can have. I suppose it’s a bit of FOMO – people do want to be involved and it’s a good thing to be involved with as well, because to me, it’s sort of about putting all the pieces to the puzzle together. It’s a real strength of catchment groups as well, because you are across a common area, say a sub catchment – you can then work with everyone within that and that’s a real strength.

Bryan: Yeah, I guess it’s also a way of switching things from having to live up to regulations or expectations and turning it into, here are some goals we want to reach, and it will help us in these ways and so it’s more of a positive mindset, I guess.

Rebecca: It is. I think the beauty of a catchment group and working with the community is that you’re working with the people that live there and they want the best for the environment that they’re living in. Often there’s generational farmers there as well, or people living within those catchments, they’re not necessarily doing things intentionally wrong, but there’s some tweaks or improvements that can be made to get a better outcome.

That’s the beauty of a catchment group as well, because farmers are very good at dealing with what’s in their farm gate, but sometimes struggle beyond the farm gate. Where a catchment group also has a real strength, is around pulling together all those pieces of that puzzle to get an overview, to then help those farmers understand what occurs beyond the farm gate and how they can help to minimise those risks or improve the environment around them.

On Nuffield and Kellogg.

Bryan: Now, I think you are one of the first two-time scholars we’ve had on the podcast because you did the big one first at Nuffield, then you went on and did a Kellogg sometime later. Can you tell me about why you wanted to do that?

Rebecca: Sure. When I did my Nuffield, I was at a bit of a crossroads. Do I want to look more high level on New Zealand and its place in the world? I certainly felt at the time a Nuffield was more appropriate for what I was wanting to do than a Kellogg and so I was fortunate to get my Nuffield. That was 2017.

Fast forward about three years and I’d started my own business and we went into COVID, and I’d been an Associate Trustee on the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust as well. So, I got a bit more exposure to the Kellogg Programme and I was particularly interested in the second module, which is Wellington based, looking at how Wellington operates.

I thought it was a great opportunity to have a go at a Kellogg because I had started my own business – I knew the value of a network. And the cohort you have on Kellogg is a very broad network within Food and Fibre in New Zealand. That was appealing to me. Understanding Wellington or getting a bit of a front row seat into Wellington for a week in a sort of post COVID environment.

Professional and personal development.

Things have changed quite a lot and I’ve always been quite big on personal development, so I saw Kellogg as a great opportunity for me to do that within my own business. That was one of the key reasons I looked at a Kellogg and I did have people go,” …is this not (a step) backwards?” A few people made comments like that – and it’s like, no, they’re just very different programmes. They absolutely complement each other – they are standalone programmes.

I thoroughly enjoyed my Kellogg, and (as part of my research) I was able to collaborate between Iwi and Farmers in the Hurunui District where I’ve been working. So that was just an opportunity as well. I do quite like the research aspect as well in these programmes. I suppose, looking at a specific topic that I could do a bit of a deep dive into.

Bryan: As I was going to say, you came back for a second crack. So, you must really value the Rural Leaders ethos and programmes?

Rebecca: I absolutely do. I’m a big believer that if you ever put yourself into something, you will only get as much out of it as what you put into it. I think certainly the Kellogg is such a well put together programme, and that it was really appealing for me at the time. And having, as I said, started my own business and wanting to expand some networks into other areas as well – it was great.

Is the food and fibre sector collaborating well?

Bryan: So do you think in the last five or six years, that word collaborate, is it being used as intended now? Are we doing a better job at it in the Food and Fibre Sector?

Rebecca: I think we are. I must admit, every time I hear a news story or something like that and the word collaboration comes up, my ears certainly prick up. I think we are getting a lot better regarding how it’s being used, when it should be used, and what we need to do to make it effective. I do see improvements. I think we’ve still got a wee way to go, though, in ag. I think the last 18 months, probably twelve months, we’ve got a bit fragmented again.

That was another comment that came from people I was meeting abroad (on Nuffield). They’re like, “God, New Zealand is so small, how can you all not be on the same page together?” And you would think that, but we do seem to be quite good at that fragmentation within the sector. Hopefully 2023 might see us a little less fragmented. I think what’s good for the Food and Fibre Sector is good for New Zealand. We need to remember that.

Bryan: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT and Food HQ.

This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

Ben Todhunter: Farming, conservation and Nuffield.

Listen to "Ben Todhunter - Farming, conservation and Nuffield." on Spreaker.

Ideas That Grow: Ben Todhunter, 2006 Nuffield Scholar.

Bryan Gibson – Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

I am Bryan Gibson, the Farmer’s Weekly Editor, and this week I’m joined by Ben
Todhunter. How’s it going?

Ben Todhunter – 2006 Nuffield Scholar, Rakaia, Canterbury.

Yeah, good thanks Bryan. Yep.

Farming, Conservation and Nuffield.

Bryan: And where are you calling in from?

Ben: I’m at home on the farm, Cleardale on the Rakaia Gorge, about an hour west of Christchurch.

Bryan: Your family’s been there a while, I understand.

Ben: We’ve been here for close to a hundred years. The boundaries have moved around a little bit in that time, but yeah. I’m the fourth generation farming this location.

Bryan: Can you tell us a little bit about the place, what your farm looks like and what you farm?

Ben: So we’re on the north slopes of Mt Hutt. The farm runs down to the Rakaia River. It’s got a big chunk of boundary with the Rakaia River. It’s got loessal soils, thousand mill rainfall, lies to the northeast – so it’s got a good aspect. It’s well located, running about five and a half thousand ewes and 300 breeding cows, finishing all replacements. We do a little bit of cropping, milling wheat and feed barley and a significant genetic business in sheep and cattle.

Bryan: So a pretty big operation.

Ben: A lot of farms are getting bigger nowadays, but yeah, there’s a lot going on and it takes a bit of keeping the moving parts ticking away and working properly.

Bryan: Have you been involved in the family farm right through, or have you been away and done other stuff?

Ben: Been back on the farm since about 1992. I’ve been overseas, did a Master’s in Dublin and I’ve worked for an Irish dairy cooperative. Done a bit of farm work in other parts of the world and worked on other farms. My father’s hips were buggered and I gave him a hand, then and I did a little bit of lecturing at university while I was trying to farm, but I’ve been at home ever since.

Nuffield Scholarship - integration of conservation into farming.

Bryan: We were talking before we came on about your Nuffield Scholarship report. You did it a little while ago now, when was that?

Ben: 2006.

Bryan: You took a look at integrating conservation into farm systems. Can you tell me a little bit about why you chose that?

Ben: Yeah, absolutely. At that stage I was representing high country farmers/pastoral lease farmers in their battles with the Crown really. Helen Clark was very keen on a network of high-country parks. The model that was being explored at that stage was to separate conservation and farming.

I thought the model was wrong. It didn’t fit high-country landscapes at all. So I wanted to look at that model and how it was carried out in other parts of the world to see if there was anything I could bring back that we might be able to learn from to help those farmers.

Bryan: From my reading, you mentioned some work that was going on in the United States that seemed like it was achieving the right results.

Ben: The bits that were interesting to me were if you look at how the conservation-farmer battles go in our country, if a conservationist like Fish and Game or Forest and Bird wants to get an outcome, they almost have to paint the existing owners of the land or of a property in a bad light so that they get some legislation change.

So it becomes a contentious battle. And that’s a bit how the system is. So the insight that I got in the states was more around where there’s clear property rights and those actors or participants are forced to talk to each other and then they will negotiate, inform outcomes that benefit both people rather than becoming polarised positions. So I think that principle was quite a useful one to carry forward. If you understand what I mean when I say that.

Bryan: Totally. In some ways, a lot of people want the same things, but it’s better to sit down with the other affected party and map a positive path forward rather than tell on them and try and get someone else to hit them with a stick, I guess.

Learning from the United States.

Ben: Yeah, very much so. You do have to remember the history of the settlement for each place in that respect. So when the west was settled in the States, it was settled around the rivers and those sort of places and that was where a lot of the biodiversity was, so their ownership vested with the farmers.

Whereas in New Zealand, a lot of the biodiversity has been retained in the wild areas, so slightly different settlement, but I think the principles are still reasonably applicable going forward.

So some of the really good outcomes you got through there were spawning habitat for fish, ensuring there was sufficient water in the creek at those times. So paying the irrigators not irrigate at that time, but the owner needed to pay them in the dry years. So it created quite fixable solutions and reasonably efficient solutions to some problems without the contention and those things we seem to get in our discussions.

Bryan: And in the time since you wrote this, how do you think things have been? Is there any change for better or worse?

Conservation and finding the value add.

Ben: I’m optimistic there’s been a slight maturing of approaches between NGOs. I’m not sure that the farmers themselves have matured in their approach on how to deal with some of these things.

One of the solutions that I looked at was market-based solutions to some of these issues where you’d pay a higher price for products. And that’s a bit of what we’re working with through the New Zealand Merino Company, to try and link positive climate action on the ground through to customers. That’s something that I’ve always been interested in, but it does seem really hard to get and maintain a premium for that over time.

Bryan: That is something that a lot in the farming world debate whether the value add is actually there for doing some of the sustainability and traceability and all that sort of thing.

Ben: So with a lot of the wool that we’re getting from Merino, we are getting significant premiums for the ethical wool that’s treated with good animal welfare standards in the current market. So there are some premiums with specific customers at certain times.

Bryan: That’s good to hear. So what made you want to do a Nuffield Scholarship? What drew you to it?

Why Nuffield?

Ben: I’ve always been interested in what happens outside of New Zealand in a wider sphere of the world. I probably didn’t have the capacity to do it at the time, but you probably never do. I always enjoy being around people that like to make change, that actually make things happen and think about the world and have got some energy to do that. The Nuffield people are certainly people who will question things and can make change.

Bryan: The actual travel and that sort of thing, the process of doing it, what was that like?

Ben: Vaughan Templeton was the other scholar in that year, we had a conference in the Netherlands in the Rabobank headquarters and met all the other Nuffield scholars from around the world. That was an amazing experience. Then we traveled for six weeks through Europe, the States and Canada with a bunch of Australians in a minivan – an amazing experience as well.

You get into a whole lot of agricultural businesses, spend a week in Washington, D.C. learning how that country operates – or doesn’t operate. Going to some of the bigger flower markets in the Netherlands like the Ellesmere Flower Market. The Dutch people are really good at logistics.

Looking at the scale of the agricultural production that happens in America and the scale of the systems and the specialisation that goes on in some of those businesses compared to our generalisation over here. Understanding from the other farmers that the issues are common around the world. Labour, environmental impacts, markets, profitability, succession, all those issues are common in some respects. So learning about that and stuff. It’s an amazing experience.

Bryan: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly. For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, or the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz.

Lynsey Stratford: Changing how we work for better outcomes.

Listen to "Changing how we work – a Nuffield Scholar’s perspective." on Spreaker.

Ideas That Grow: Lynsey Stratford, 2021 Nuffield Scholar.

Bryan Gibson – Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

I’m Bryan Gibson, editor of Farmer’s Weekly. Today, I’m talking to former lawyer, consultant, and dairy farmer, Lynsey Stratford. How’s it going?

Lynsey Stratford – 2021 Nuffield Scholar, Curio Bay, Southland.

Good thanks. Nice to talk to you.

Digging deeper with a Nuffield Scholarship.

Bryan: What have you been up to?

Lynsey: I’ve been up in Christchurch with Rural Leaders, to celebrate the end of the scholarship programme for the 2020s and the 2021s.

Bryan: Fantastic. As you mentioned you are a recent scholar. What made you choose the Nuffield Scholarship?

Lynsey: To be honest, I applied just after our first COVID lockdown. Like everybody, I’d been thinking about what I enjoy doing during that time – being stuck inside. I love to travel and learn new things. I’ve always looked at the Scholarship and thought that the stories from previous scholars sounded like a great experience and opportunity.

I didn’t really think I’d get a scholarship, but I thought, what the heck, let’s give it a go, and if nothing else it’ll be an interesting experience. I was very surprised and honored to be selected as a scholar for 2021.

Bryan: And what sort of area did you want to study?

Lynsey: I love working with people in the primary sector. I went into the scholarship thinking I would look at health and safety and providing better workplaces for people that are more productive and engaging for better health and wellbeing outcomes.

My project ended up being called ‘Super Humans, Not Superheroes’. It looked at how we do all this fabulous stuff in the sector, but we’re probably asking a bit too much of ourselves. We expect to be superhuman, and our teams too.

With a slightly different approach to structuring work, we could support better outcomes that are more engaging, create better work, more productivity, and still improve the health and safety of our people.

Challenging and changing mindsets toward on-farm workplace safety.

Bryan: Working in the farming world, it’s a relatively dangerous place and it can be somewhat isolating at times. What sort of strategies do people need to try to work into their businesses to make it better for people?

Lynsey: I guess the good thing is most are low, or no-cost, so you can make quite big changes without spending a lot of money. The key to it all is mindset.

What I found was that farmers have some assumptions that aren’t very helpful. We accept the fact that work might be dangerous. We assume there’s nothing we can do about it. And that’s not right. There are changes we can make, but those assumptions and those mindsets have been deeply held for quite some time.

Farmers don’t think they’ll ever get hurt. They think other people might. Generally, we don’t think that we are prone to accidents. So, we don’t really take any steps to manage the risks that there are in our work. We tend to normalise the fact that it is a dangerous occupation and so we don’t try and challenge that by changing how we work.

If you’ve got family or team members who think that way, that’s a good place to start. We need people to help us understand that there are things that we can do to organise work better. So, lots of the time, we’ll be told what to do, but not necessarily the why or the how. And that’s just good team communication.

We shouldn’t expect people to just know this stuff, but rather teach them and support them as they develop skills.

Bryan: I guess an engaged work team is probably going to not only be more productive, but also be happier and safer, would you expect?

An engaged farm team means thriving workplaces and better outputs.

Lynsey: Absolutely. There’s some shocking statistics from Gallup, who looked at engagement across the world. For New Zealand, only 20% of our workforce, and this is across all sectors, is fully engaged. If you’ve got a team of five people, that’s only one giving everything they’ve got.

So, yeah, if we can tap into engagement, it’s better for people. They feel like they’ve got some control and they’re growing – they like to be there. So, if you’re an employer, those people will go that extra mile for you because they want to be at work and they feel passionate about it.

And engagement is, if they feel you care about them, that they’ve got some control over how they themselves can organise their work. That they’re growing and developing – those are all things that we can improve if we start to think differently about how we organise work.

Bryan: I guess what you’ve just been talking about feeds into the ‘why’ you’re there. If there’s a bigger goal that everyone is working towards, then that can help, can’t it?

Lynsey: I guess that’s where we’ve gone a bit wrong. In the past we’ve focused on compliance, but we haven’t seen these wider benefits of good work. And there’s some interesting stuff that’s been done by the Business Leaders’ Health & Safety Forum by Hillary Bennett. It said that if you improve how you set up work, train people, you’ve got good processes, so they understand their role, and their responsibility, and how to change how work gets done – if you do all those things well, you improve mental health as well.

So, that’s another component of this, that we’re looking at wellbeing as well as physical health and safety.

Bryan: People who are engaged, feeling good about themselves are probably going to produce better work and be safer when they do it, aren’t they?

Lynsey: Yeah. And be on the thriving end of the spectrum of mental health, instead of the just surviving space – or not surviving at all. So, that’s what we want. We want good work that sets us up for thriving people and great farming.

Bryan: So, you’ve just finished then?

A different kind of Nuffield Scholarship experience.

Lynsey: Yes. We had an experience that was interrupted somewhat by COVID. So, it’s been a very weird scholarship experience because it’s kind of backwards. Usually, you do your international travel, and then you produce your report. Ours will be the other way around. But I think our experience, although different, has been just as good.

What we did was travel as a cohort. So, the 2021 scholars linking in with the 2020 scholars. We traveled through New Zealand, from Northland right down to where I farm in Curio Bay, Southland. We did the length and breadth of New Zealand together.

Then we did our research independently, but with as much as we could face-to-face. A lot of it had to be remote via Zoom. So, now I get to go and do my international travel through August, September, and October.

Bryan: You might want a rewrite afterwards!

Lynsey: I think that’s the aim. We kind of validate what we’ve seen, and if there’s anything we need to change, we’ll revisit.

Bryan: And that’s exciting. I mean, the travel component is a big part of the scholarship. Where are you off to?

Lynsey: My group goes to Japan, Belgium, Ireland, and California.

Bryan: Well, that’s an exciting thing to look forward to.

Lynsey: Yeah, it is. It’ll be a Northern Hemisphere trip in the summer. So, that’s also quite exciting now, as we sit here in Invercargill.

Bryan: When you’re not knocking out your report as part of your Nuffield Programme, what does life look like for you?

Lynsey: I’ve been married to a Kiwi dairy farmer for nearly 20 years now. Being on farm with him was a big part of life until recently. We sold our farm effective 1st of June. Now, we’re kind of redefining where we go and what we do, but I’m also a mum, which is very important to me.

I’ve got two children that I like to focus on. I like to try and support them with school things and support our local community too. And then I also have a small consulting business that helps primary sector businesses – but all sorts of businesses manage their people.

From cows to consulting – a farmer advising farmers.

Bryan: What sort of consulting or advice do you offer businesses?

Lynsey: So it’s interesting because I started out as an employment lawyer in the UK. There I was focused on compliance and getting agreements, policies, procedures and following all the legal requirements.

I still do all those things, but I’m much more focused on trying to improve work setup so that we’ve got engaged teams, great communication, good processes. We’re training people and developing them, making sure that the behavior we’ve in the workplace is setting up a great culture that engages people. So, I’ve moved away from just focusing on the compliance.

Bryan: I think that’s a move the agricultural and horticultural industries in New Zealand need to complete still. A lot of the reaction I get at the newspaper to health and safety reform, or regulation is that it’s just a hassle, a box-ticking exercise, whereas if you do change that mindset into creating a space where everyone can thrive, then that’s when the goal is going to be reached.

Lynsey: That’s one of the things I concluded in my research. It has been sold to us as a compliance exercise – but it takes a lot of resource to change mindsets. It’s not that easy. And so, the easier thing to do is to set us up for compliance, make sure we’ve got the plans in place. But if we really want to make change, it’s that mindset that we need to focus on. We need resources to do that.

We need great people connecting farmers with good information that helps them understand the opportunity and ‘the why’ for them, whatever it is. That then supports them to develop the skills they need. And it’s not something that we can nail in one workshop or one interaction. The resourcing really needs to be there, and it needs to be long term. We’re talking about generational change if we want to change mindsets.

I guess I’ll just give a shout out to Ben McLachlan. He’s a 2020 scholar and his report is about mindsets that help us change. He’s looking at the growth mindset, which I found was critical to getting great workplaces.

A workplace where we’ve got a growth mindset is one where we understand that people can develop new ways of thinking and new skills if we give them the opportunity and the right support. I was stoked when I saw his work, as it aligns nicely with mine as well.

Bryan: That leads into my next question about the community that being part of the Rural Leaders team builds among those who are working through the same cohort?

Lynsey: We were lucky. Talking to previous scholars, they have often got their scholarship, briefly met the New Zealand cohort, then gone overseas and developed relationships internationally – but not quite as tight a relationship with the New Zealand scholars.

I think we’ve been lucky that we got that chance to spend time together, because of COVID. It’s the silver lining. It’s been amazing to see the projects that the scholars came up with across those two cohorts. Some of the best opportunities were the discussions that we had in the van as we toured New Zealand visiting leading businesses. Thanks to all those scholars who talked to me and shared their views.

Bryan: Excellent. So, the programme is something that you’d recommend to other people?

Lynsey: Absolutely. It’s not easy. To do anything like this where you are basically challenging things that you thought or your beliefs in how the world works, that has been a challenge. But it’s been a unique opportunity too. I just can’t think where you’d get the chances that we got to visit all these amazing businesses.

We went to certain Rocket and Aerospace businesses. I didn’t even know we had these kinds of businesses in New Zealand. If you want to stretch your assumptions and learn some new things and meet some awesome people, I thoroughly recommend it.

Bryan: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly. For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand farming scholarships, or the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz.

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Parmindar Singh: 2022 CSC Insights – Norfolk, UK

Parmindar Singh

2022 Nuffield Scholar

Background

The 2022 Nuffield Contemporary Scholars Conference (CSC) was held during March 2022. Nuffield 2021 and 2022 Scholars travelled from 15 countries and were hosted in Norfolk, UK. Prior to our departure in March the New Zealand Government announced their plan to relax border restrictions, welcoming New Zealand residents back to New Zealand. With this announcement we had the opportunity to attend the CSC in the UK and represent Nuffield New Zealand.

Pre-conference, Lucie Douma and I spent time with Nuffield Scholars David and Christine Hill in Norwich. David and Christine introduced us to agriculture to Norfolk, where we visited their arable farming business, visited friends of the Hills who were dairy farmers in the village and toured the local town and village getting an insight into farming in Norfolk. David and Christine shared with us their farming and family history and the challenges the UK farming sector was facing.

Farms in the Norwich area consisted of generational farming with long-time family connections to the land and estates. Larger estates like Holkham Hall consisted of variable farming and commercial enterprises and considerable land ownership. These estates are well recognised in the UK, along with their family ownership and heritage and in some circumstances their association to the House of Lords.

The UK Farming Situation: March 2022

The Russian invasion on Ukraine, has created a global humanitarian crisis. In the UK, it signified the immediate concern for food security and the additional pressure on farmers who had already been challenged over the past two years. Spiralling input costs were front of mind, particularly with wheat, fuel, energy and fertiliser costs.

Russia’s significant control over the supply of gas though the UK and the EU, imposed not only an increasing input cost on farm, however also increasing household and living costs. General conversation with the UK public, posed an anxious population with the on-going impact of covid-19 on businesses and the additional pressures from the Russian invasion on the Ukraine. It was interesting to note, that although the general UK population was sighting increasing food costs in the supermarkets, when comparing UK super market food costs with New Zealand super market food costs, it appeared that the cost of food in the UK was significantly less that the cost of food in New Zealand.

Additional changes in agriculture in the UK also reflect the transition from the long-standing EU scheme of agricultural subsidies (Common Agricultural Policy [CAP]) to the phasing out of the subsidy scheme with the exit of the UK from the EU. Post Brexit, the UK is navigating the challenges of staff shortages and increasing costs of production (which are likely to see the cost of local produce continue to increase), creating additional pressure for UK farmers.

Regenerative Agriculture was a topic discussed often and referred to as an opportunity to restore soil health and the quality of waterways, whilst reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enabling a healthy ecosystem; expanding the conversation of the global environmental challenge.

UK dairy farmers also expressed the increasing pressure and scrutiny they were facing from the public on environmental and animal welfare issues.

The CSC Agenda

The CSC agenda included presentations from agricultural leaders, identifying agriculture and the food of the world, British agriculture in a global setting, the impact of agriculture on climate and the global environmental challenge.

The all-important health, safety and wellbeing also featured on the agenda, with some real-life take-home messages and scenarios. A visit to the Norwich Research Park, highlighted the research and innovation undertaken in searching for solutions to worldwide challenges in food-related disease and research into plant sciences and species.

We also visited the Norwich Food Enterprise Park. This park has been created to encourage and support food production, processing and agriculture through co-location of commercial enterprises. Our visit to the park provided us with an opportunity to participate in a small group activity to come up with solutions to challenges four businesses in the park were facing. It was a great way to learn about real case scenarios and learn about a group of diverse agricultural businesses.

A visit to Houghton Estate and Dairy was enlightening, hearing from two enthusiastic farmers about their journey. Holkham Hall & Estate, was the final destination in Norwich. Holkham was somewhat surreal, with history dating back to the 1600’s and a family estate that was built for the 1^st Earl of Leicester in the 1700’s. The Estate consists of 25, 000 acres, with business ranging from agriculture, holiday park, retail to property development.

The final few days of the conference were spent in London, with a visit to the Houses of Parliament and a celebration to mark the closing of the CSC Conference with a Gala Dinner.

Learning from Global Scholars

The CSC offered the opportunity to engage with global agricultural leaders. Learning from other scholars about their country and their agriculture was a highlight.

Such a diverse group of agricultural enthusiasts, ranging from: cows, camels, poultry, crocodile, pigs, vineyards, horticulture, bees, deer, sheep, flowers, arable, sheep and beef to agricultural service and technology providers and developers (no doubt there was more). From the opening of the CSC on March 7^th to the closing of the CSC March 14^th, each day, a country group would present agriculture in their country.

Learning about how countries engage in agriculture and listening to the proud country men and women talk about their work and their countries work back home, was a great start to every day at the CSC.

NZ Farming vs UK Farming

UK is farmed according to landscape, water availability and weather/climate conditions much like NZ. Norwich for example consisted of predominantly arable farms, with variable crops (dominant crops included: wheat, oilseed rape and sugar beet) and forward negotiated contract agreements. Arable farms consisted of large fields and it was interesting to note that some fields were planted with more than one crop simultaneously.

Although the EU is recognised as a leading exporter of Dairy alongside New Zealand and the US, the UK was not seen as a leading exporter of dairy, conversely more of a domestic producer. New Zealand exports more than 90% of domestically produced dairy products and revenue exports contribute significantly to the New Zealand economy. The UK reports significantly less contribution to its national economy from its agricultural exports.

Across the UK, dairy farming appears to be more predominant in the South. As with NZ, some dairy systems are more complex than others and weather dictates the type of dairy system applied. The dairy farms we visited in Norfolk, housed their animals in barns, which appeared to be the dominant form of dairy farming system applied in this particular region in UK.

New Zealand Brand Reputation

CSC participant and fellow scholar feedback consistently focussed on a global perception of New Zealand producing premium agricultural products, with a focus on grass fed and an organic style of farming where products can be traced back to origins of a country that cares about their environment and animal welfare. “New Zealand punches above its weight”, was a consistent and humbling message from many fellow scholars.

My insight from the conference and travel, was that New Zealand is profound at producing premium quality food. Globally we are viewed as leading in all thing’s agriculture and we are seen as a country who cares about environment factors and animal welfare. We have a great story to tell, and we are getting better at telling it!

Lucie Douma and Parmindar Singh reporting from abroad.

After a two-year hiatus courtesy of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Contemporary Scholar Conference (CSC) finally took place this year, in Norfolk, UK. Lucie Douma and Parmindar Singh, 2022 Nuffield Scholars, attended and reported back on the event and their travels. The following article brings together these reports.

As part of their scholarship programme key milestones, they also compiled a brief insight work report.

Follow the links to read Lucie and Parmindar’s Insights Reports.

The 2022 Nuffield Contemporary Scholars Conference.

“Lucie Douma and I represented New Zealand this year. The Contemporary Scholars Conference was a great way to start the global aspect of our Nuffield Programme. The Conference provided an opportunity to meet global agricultural enthusiasts and build new network of connections,” says Parmindar Singh.

“Our hosting region, Norwich, is predominantly arable farming with notable long time family estates. The landscape, climate and access to water very much determines land use and production.

“Before the CSC, Lucie and I were very generously hosted by Christine and David Hill. David is a Nuffield Scholar who is still very active in the Nuffield community. David travelled the world to study biotech crops. His wife was a science teacher and very involved in agricultural education and research and is also actively involved in several Norfolk organisations working in this filed. They manage their 500+ha arable farm.

“David and Christine showed us around their neighbourhood, we visited a local dairy farm and learned about the Hill’s arable business and family history,” shares Parmindar.

Our hosts, Christine, and David Hill had introduced us to Norwich and to some of the Nuffield Team.

Sharing New Zealand with the world.

New Zealand, our farming systems, and the positioning we have on global markets was part of virtually every conversation Lucie and Parmindar had at the CSC. This was driven in some part by a presentation Lucie and Parmindar gave to those attending. This was a brief overview of the New Zealand food and fibre sector.

“At the start of each day of the CSC, representatives of all participating nations were asked to share a short presentation of the agricultural sector in their respective countries. In all cases the ten-minute time limit was not enough, and we were no different,” shares Lucie. “For our presentation, Parmindar opened with our values and understanding towards agriculture and how we incorporate the principles of Whakapapa and Kaitiakitanga.

“I did the second half of our presentation and covered the key statistics of farming in New Zealand and shared our vision of fit for a better world.”

Parmindar adds, “ Learning from other scholars about their country and their agriculture, was always a highlight of the day. To be given the opportunity to explain more about what we do here at home was a time for reflection on how proud I am to be a New Zealand farmer.”

The CSC business hackathon.

One of the initiatives included in the conference programme was the so called “business hackathon” where each group of scholars visited four different businesses over one day.

“The visits started with a 20-minute induction about the business followed by a specific challenge. Then as a group, we had to come together with a result – a solution to the challenge. We then had to present this to our hosts at the end of each session,’ explains Lucie Douma.

“It was an interesting way to get to know more about some of the notable businesses in the region. I really enjoyed the exchanges we had during the hackathon with the other scholars and the local business community,” adds Parmindar.

At the Houses of Parliament and the Palace of Westminster with Aussie friends

Two years’ Nuffield Scholars get together.

This year’s conference was the first after a two-year hiatus caused by Covid restrictions around the world.

“It was great to have two years combined – instead of having 60 or 70 people, we had 140. Also attending were the 2020 UK Scholars and we got to meet some of the alumni,” recounts Lucie.

Parmindar agrees, “All in all, CSC was a full-on conference, where we had the opportunity to meet passionate and enthusiastic global agricultural leaders.

“Many scholars commented on how New Zealand punches above its weight and has created a name for itself as a premium agricultural production powerhouse. It seems we are known as a small country with a notable place in the premium agri-products market.

“We also touched on many global issues around climate, water, and soil management along with political tension particularly with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the associated concerns for global food security.

“We’ve both been reflecting on the last few weeks and feeling very privileged to have had the opportunity to engage with whanau from across the globe! Thank you Nuffield New Zealand, the CSC in Norfolk was invaluable,” concludes Parmindar.

Lucie’s post-conference travels: North England, Scotland, Shetland Islands, Norway and the Netherlands.

Young Farmers Club, Shetland Islands - dog training session

Training session for a sheep dog, Shetland Islands

After the CSC, Parmindar travelled back to New Zealand to organise further travel plans for later in the year, while Lucie had the opportunity to further explore the United Kingdom and Europe.

She went to Wales, where unfortunately she tested positive for COVID and had to spend a week in isolation – giving her time to reschedule her itinerary.

“I went up through Northern England to The Lakes District and spent some time with farmers in Cumbria, and North Cumberland.

“What really struck me is that people were facing similar issues to what we do in New Zealand. Almost all farmers who have similar systems to us, are facing the same challenges with labour access and input costs. It’s a global problem, not a localised one.

“In Scotland, I visited Angus Soft Fruits. These growers supply 15 to 20% of all the fresh berries to UK supermarkets. It was interesting to talk to them and hear about the challenges they face with Brexit, and what they are doing to secure the labour they need to harvest. They need roughly 400 seasonal workers over the main picking period.

“They have contracts with growers in other countries like Morocco, Spain to ensure year-round berries are available for the UK supermarkets. It was informative to hear how they are dealing with the realities of modern farming,” says Lucie.

“The next stop was the Shetland Islands – probably the most eye-opening time I had. They farm so differently to us here in New Zealand, it’s a more community-based approach they have built there; where everybody supports each other,” explains Lucie.

“They don’t have the same labour challenges as larger farming operations do, because they operate as one community, they operate on mutual support – helping each other in times of need. That really came across in my conversations with the people there. They have an active young farmers group and I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with them. I really enjoyed that,” concludes Lucie.

Next on the schedule was a visit to a Norwegian salmon farm. “This is an industry that has risen at pace and scale over the last few decades. The wild salmon population around the Norwegian coast numbers 500,000. This farm has 11 cages with the capacity to hold 1.8 million salmon and there are over 1000 farms in Norway such as this one.

They are very advanced in some respects. When it comes to data management, similar issues exist around data interoperability of systems as with the agriculture sector. Biosecurity is an important issue for them as well,” adds Lucie.

Lucie then headed to the Netherlands, but not before experiencing full Norwegian blizzard.

The Netherlands had a highly advanced agriculture sector. From traditional horticulture and animal farming through to developing new industries, including camel milking.

Land-use change in the Netherlands means incorporating energy production into the systems. Some arable farms where busy building large wind turbines and other farms had solar panel fields incorporated within them. Lucie visited advanced farming barns where the whole rood was covered in solar panels.

“With the Russia-Ukraine conflict, energy production and self-sufficiency has come to the forefront of farming. All farming systems I visited were diversified in some part, and they all had a farm shop in order to share the story of their produce and build strong connections with the local communities,” recounted Lucie.

You can read both Lucie and Parmindar’s Insights Reports here.

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Parmindar Singh

Background

The UK Farming Situation: March 2022

The CSC Agenda

Learning from Global Scholars

NZ Farming vs UK Farming

New Zealand Brand Reputation

The 2022 Nuffield Contemporary Scholars Conference.

Sharing New Zealand with the world.

The CSC business hackathon.

Two years’ Nuffield Scholars get together.

Lucie’s post-conference travels: North England, Scotland, Shetland Islands, Norway and the Netherlands.