Podcast Archives | Rural Leaders

Alice Rule – A delicate balance: vines, vision and family.

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In this Ideas That Grow Podcast, Alice Rule, Hawke’s Bay winemaker and 2019 Kellogg Scholar, talks to Bryan Gibson about her journey from a Bay of Islands farm to the wine industry.

Alice discusses her circular glass economy research, leadership lessons from Kellogg, and balancing entrepreneurship, rural advisory work, and family amid uncertain wine markets.

Episode Transcript

BG: Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly:

You’ve joined the Ideas That Grow podcast, brought to you by Rural Leaders. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant ideas that grow so our regions can flourish.

Ideas That Grow is presented in Association with Farmers Weekly. Welcome to Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m your host, Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of the Farmers Weekly.

This week, we are talking to a Kellogg scholar, Alice Rule. Kia ora Alice, how are you?

AR: Alice Rule – Winemaker/Owner, Rural Advisor and 2019 Kellogg Scholar:
Kia ora. Thank you for having me. I’m good.

BG: You were part of Kellogg Cohort 40 in 2019?

Background and the journey to winemaking.

AR: Yeah, that was me. I was actually pretty lucky to get on there that early. They normally have huge waiting lists.

BG: And you’re in the Hawke’s Bay. Is that where you grew up?

AR: No, I grew up on a dairy sheep and beef farm in the Bay of Islands. A wee while away, but I moved to the Hawke’s Bay in my teens to get into the wine industry. I’ve always based myself here, even though I’ve done several vintages elsewhere. We just bought our forever home here. Yeah, this is base.

BG: Growing up on a farm, what caught your eye about viticulture?

AR: Grape growing really appealed to me because you don’t have to get out of bed so early in the morning. Poohed on by cows, that’s pretty relentless. As much as I love that farm life, I thought grapes would be easier, but on the flip side, potentially, in many respects, much, much more difficult.

The wine industry, I think from an outsider, looks very glamorous. It looks sexy. You see all these beautiful photographic images and videos of these swooping vineyards. But actually, behind the scenes, there was a lot of hard work that goes in day in, day out, and those vintages, they’re pretty gruelling.

BG: What part of the winemaking process did you want to be involved in, specifically?

The wine industry context.

AR: I took quite an unconventional approach in that I didn’t actually really specialise in either viticulture or winemaking. Initially, when I first started out, I did a lot of lab work in the wineries, did a lot of cellar work, and then I got into the vineyards because I understood there was this real big disconnect between the understanding on what’s happening in the winery and what was happening in the vineyards.

If anyone in the wine industry will know that there’s often tensions between the two, especially over harvest. I thought I’ll get into the vineyards, and I acted as a technical viticulturist for many years. But balanced that with my first year of winemaking vintages too. A lot of people would choose a discipline, either winemaking or viticulture or marketing in business, and just stay doing that. But that was never mine. Mine was actually far more broad.

BG: You’ve moved away from, specifically, the wine making business into a broader rural advisor role?

AR: Everyone will know that the wine industry is quite a challenging place to be. It has been for quite some time, really. I started exporting in COVID and was lucky enough to get into four international markets. At that time, the business was doing really well. Those four markets were keeping the business going. I was making really good money, but it wasn’t a full-time job for me.

I got into Rural Advisory and worked with a lot of farms on the East Coast. This was post-cyclone Gabrielle, and helped with them. The business has always kept on ticking in the background. I haven’t lost my love for it.

It’s just a plus because at the moment, it’s quite a frightening place to be, really. Producing with markets as uncertain as they are. I’ve been there, and I’ve recently had twin babies, they’re now toddlers. My risk appetite just isn’t there anymore. I’ve got to choose some security, so that’s why having a job as well as this is what I’m doing at the moment.

On Kellogg.

BG: It’s been a few years since you did the Kellogg Programme. What attracted you to it?

AR: I was actually quite young, and I’ve listened to quite a few of these podcasts, and there was quite a few people suggesting and recommending doing it later on. Get life experience and business experience.

I had a mentor, and he linked me up with Lawrence Yule, actually. Lawrence said, Listen, Alice, if there’s one thing that you need to do right now, it is get on to the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme. I didn’t at the time, know a lot about it. I followed his advice, and they let me onto the programme much sooner than what I anticipated, and all the stars aligned.

Reflecting back, that was the best thing that I could have done. For me in my career and where my business was at the time, the best thing that I could have done. Timing was perfect, and I would have been maybe in my late 20s.

BG: Every Kellogg Scholar needs to plough their way through a research report. You did yours on the circular economy of glass?

Kellogg research into glass sustainability.

AR: Yeah, I did. At the time, I couldn’t afford to do Kellogg, so I got a sponsorship through the Glass Packaging Forum and AGMARDT. Thanks to those guys for enabling this opportunity, big shout out.

It was a good opportunity to get behind the hood of what happens with glass in New Zealand once we’ve finished with it, the importance of recycling, what happens in councils where they co-mingle and they have dirty glass is an example, and the huge carbon benefits of actually recycling colour to a basically smashed up glass.

BG: A lot of people, I guess, they enjoy a bottle of wine. They chuck it in the green bin or whatever you’ve got it in your region. Truck takes it away, and you don’t really think about it anymore, do you?

AR: No, you don’t. It’s actually quite a complex system in that there’s only one, or at the time that I did the research, there was only one place that would actually harvest all of this glass. It was all deposited in one place.

We only had one major glass manufacturer, OI. They just recycle and re-melt this down, and that reduces emissions quite significantly because you can re-melt at much lower temperatures than virgin material materials.

It was quite cool. I got to go through the plant and see how it was all collected and the challenges and the waste and the dirtiness of systems where glass isn’t recycled properly. Got to look at the councils that were doing an amazing job, and Tauranga Council was being one of the leaders in that space. Hugely complicated supply system for just glass, but cool thing to research. Very grateful.

BG: The cool thing about doing these research projects is, as you say, you get out there and see stuff happening which is what your work is relevant to, but you also meet a lot of people and ask a lot of questions.

AR: Loads, like New Zealand Wine got involved, our advocacy team. They peer reviewed my report. They pushed it through the sustainable wine growing, and that opened up doors and got me onto the technical advisory group for SWNZ (Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand).

Back then, it was amazing. But again, this is all Kellogg, really. The connections, the learnings, the interactions. It’s not a research project that sits in a drawer.

BG: What about all the other bits of the Kellogg Programme? You have those three and a half weeks in intensive contact with your cohort being bombarded with information, really. When you’re doing it, it does seem a bit overwhelming. How did you find it?

Kellogg leadership skills and being anchored in your values.

AR: It was actually so good. We were really lucky to have such a strong cohort. Like any of my cohort that will be listening to this will agree with me. We are in regular contact. We have got such a strong, and I’m so grateful for that, so many different walks of life. But again, a huge bow of people to become Sounding boards.

I guess another really amazing thing is the people that we managed to meet along the way. They’ve become firm friends. Julia Jones is another example. She’s become the most amazing mentor for me over the years. It just opened so many opportunities.

BG: We’ve talked about the research opportunities that the Kellogg Programme gives you, and of course, the cohort and the connections you make there. But of course, it is a leadership programme. Could you tell me some of the key leadership tools you took out of it?

AR: That’s a cool question. Something that really stood out for me is the amount of confidence that I got out of the programme. It just equips you with so many tools. For me, I was a business owner at the time, and I’ve now moved into a rural advisory capacity. I look at leadership as being more than just a job title.

I’m looking at leadership as being grounded and who you are, owning your values, something I will not compromise on. That comes with this confidence. You get that confidence when you are surrounded by such amazing people and you have been given these opportunities by high performance coaches. That would be a key principle.

I think, it is just being anchored in your values.

I walked away from my MBA at the very last minute because I was anchored in those values. They wouldn’t let me do my dissertation or my research in sustainable business. I had that confidence to say, I’m not here for letters after my name. Catch you later. I’m going to do my dissertation on sustainable land use. I’m just going to do that.

Equally in the workplace, just having the courage to walk away from ongoing disrespect, I think that is leadership. To be trusted and respected and be that voice that people want to pick up the phone and call you, that to me is leadership. It takes time, and Kellogg plays a big part in that.

BG: That’s great to hear. It sounds like you really took a lot out of the programme.

AR: I did. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders’ podcast presented in Association with Farmers Weekly. For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, the Horticulture NZ Leadership Programme, the Engage Programme and the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz.

Tim Orlando-Reep – on catchment groups, carbon credits and Kellogg.

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In this Ideas That Grow Podcast, 2025 Kellogg Scholar Tim Orlando-Reep shares how his Waikato beef farm integrates carbon forestry, biodiversity ambitions and catchment collaboration.

While pine credits stack up financially, his research through the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme explores how native plantings can balance profitability with environmental impacts.

Episode Transcript

BG: Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly: You’ve joined the Ideas That Grow podcast, brought to you by Rural Leaders. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant Ideas That Grow so our regions can flourish. Ideas That Grow is presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

Welcome back to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of the Farmers Weekly, and our first guest for 2026, is recent Kellogg Programme graduate, Tim Orlando-Reep. Tim, how’s it going?

TO-R: Tim Orlando-Reep, Beef Farmer, 2025 Kellogg Scholar:
Hi, Bryan. How are you going? Thanks for having me.

BG: Now, you’re farming up in coastal Waikato, aren’t you?

A diverse Waikato beef farm.

TO-R: Yeah, we’re based in the Northwest Waikato. About 10k’s as a crow flies, from the Coast. So, we get some nice westerlies here. Very nice area. Lived here pretty much my whole life. We fatten cattle up here, so buying in a lot of wieners and finishing them and sending to the works.

BG: Obviously, you’ve got a pretty diverse operation. You’ve got some carbon farming going on as well?

TO-R: We’ve got about 10 to 12 hectares of pine trees and second rotation carbon. My father was a bit of a pioneer when it came to grabbing onto the carbon market. He had a love of trees, and we’re taking that to the next level. We have been doing a lot of carbon farming through the pine trees, and we also do a lot of spaced willows and poplars throughout the farm. As well as the carbon advantage, I guess, we also have the advantage of shelter for stock, which is becoming more and more prevalent and much more important.

Also, if the worst does come to the worst, we can always do a bit of pruning in the summer there and feed some of the forage. It works really well. It’s a great way of beautifying at the farm as well and providing a bit of colour in the autumn.

BG: How does the carbon farming or the forestry side of things, how does that fit into your overall strategy of farming? Is it easily done? How did you go about it?

TO-R: We identified the steeper parts of the farm. We’re quite lucky up here. We have some really good soils, but there are some fragile steep parts. Probably the only thing we could have done with that really was put it into pine trees. I remember most of my school holidays planting pine trees, especially throughout the winter, through those steep areas where the cattle were making a bit of a mess.

Even now, we’re identifying places where it should have gone into trees, but we’re looking at now how we can diversify that a bit more. But look, it’s a project, it’s about 12 hectares, and we prune it all ourselves. We thin it all ourselves.

Tell you what, on a hot summer’s day, like it has been for the last week or something, there’s nothing better than escaping to the forestry and pruning some trees 12: 00 to 3: 00 for a bit of shade and check in on a podcast and get an idea of what’s going on in the world.

BG: You mentioned natives briefly. Of course, you recently went through the Kellogg Programme, and your scholar report was about developing a more robust biodiversity credit system.

Kellogg research into carbon credits.

TO-R: It was really interesting. We’re now identifying probably not the most fragile areas on the farm, but the next layer down, so the LUC 5 stuff. Instead of putting a pine tree on there, I’m just trying to work out, well, the idea was what we put on there that could compete with the pinus radiata. How could a native stack up, I guess, as far as income per hectare.

At the moment, it’s chalk and cheese as far as that comparison goes, compared to a fast-growing exotic like a pinus radiata. I really want to delve down and see what we can do as an industry or even as a nation as far as how can we encourage farmers and landowners to be planting native instead of pinus radiata.

It might not be one to one as far as income is concerned, but something that’s close to that has a little bit more longevity and a bit more permanence compared to every 25 years, basically destroying the hillside. At the moment, I’m pruning some trees at the back of the farm So it’s 10, 12 years old, and there’s some beautiful ferns and stuff coming through.

And I think, in 15 years’ time, this is all going to be decimated if we continue this whole cycle of harvesting pinus radiata. If I could back it up before they went in and I could put in a native tree and receive the same income than I can from carbon credit, then that’d be a win-win for everybody.

And that’s what I really wanted to delve into as far as (my Kellogg research) the project was concerned. Because what do we have to do to really excite people about putting in a native plant instead of an exotic. Where is the financial reward? Because at the end of the day, the feel good factor doesn’t pay the mortgage. We need to make sure it’s feasible from a financial viewpoint.

So, what’s holding farmers back from being excited about putting in a native tree? It was really exciting going through the process of the research and understanding through a survey, through quite a large number of people, through the Waikato. A lot of people are already putting native plants in place, and they’re doing it off their own, off their own back. They’re not doing it for a financial reward.

They’re doing it for ecological or freshwater reasons. But there’s no (financial) reward for that. I just feel as though if there’s some way of supporting farmers to even bring back some of financial input they put into that so they can establish a bit more, it’s got to be a lot better than what it is at the moment, where you’re just pouring money into something that looks great and is a great thing for the environment. There’s no financial incentive, I guess, to do that. It was exciting to see that farmers are just doing it anyway. I just feel as though there’s a real opportunity here for farmers to be able to monetise or financially receive something for that.

BG: It would seem to me it’s more of a holistic way of looking at things. I mean, carbon farming is a reward system for battling greenhouse gas emissions, and you get rewarded for that.

Planting natives also combats climate change, but as you say, in a slightly slower way. But the fresh water implications, the biodiversity implications from diverse native plantings, that’s also really beneficial to everyone. Why can’t we come up with a reward system for that?

TO-R: Exactly. Look, there’s been a lot of work done around this area, and internationally, there are some good established schemes. Domestically as well, we have Maungatautari Mountain with Ekos, and they’ve done some fantastic work over there.

The thing that I’ve realised is it’s a lot more complicated to measure than carbon credit. So, carbon credit is just the species of tree times the amount of hectares of that species of tree cover. And it’s a fairly standard equation. When we come into biodiversity, how do you measure that? And that’s one of the things I got from my semi-structured interviews, is that it is so complicated.

A lot of the costs of auditing that get sucked up by our subject matter experts, our auditors, and all that thing. And does that follow through effect go back to the people who are actually putting the plants on the ground?

So, it was an interesting process to understand that, and then also, how could we pick some of the low hanging fruit there and say, right, we understand what’s probably restricting our biodiversity support or advancement in these areas already.

How can we help steady the ship, I guess, for the lack of a better phrase, and move forward and increase some of that biodiversity in some of those areas already. It was interesting.

BG: Yeah. I mean, it’s really heartening to hear that a lot of the farmers up your way are already on board ideologically with this stuff and are just doing it because they feel like it’s a good thing to do for them.

I guess some of these plantings, as you say, you’re seeing more heat events up there, the volume of rainfall is rising. I guess that work will build a bit more resilience into the farming system.

TO-R: I think a lot of farmers have realised that already. Bill Garland is a classic example. We’ve had a few open days up there, and what he’s developed over the last 20, 30 years on that property, he still has the weather events, but he’s the person who now says, well, look, we can put in something here, and it’s not going to get destroyed because we put in some mitigation.

That’s just a byproduct of what they’ve done. They’ve decided that’s the best land use for that particular gully. The flow-on effects of what’s done downstream have just been fantastic.

You’re right, it’s just building up a bit of resilience. It’s going to save you money in the long term, isn’t it? I feel so sorry for the people who have had these weather events, especially on the East Coast. You’re putting in fences again that you’ve probably only put in a couple of years ago. That can be quite a soul-destroying, and it’s hard. Until you get to that stage where you can start thinking long term, it’s a hard road.

Catchment groups.

BG: You mentioned Bill there. I mean, you’re quite a fan, I understand, of catchment groups, the catchment, collective way of thinking of things, farmers working together for a common goal. Do you think that’s the model for the future of environmental progress in New Zealand farming?

TO-R: Yeah, Bryan, I think that’s a really good point. The catchment groups tend to be very farmer-orientated. I think farmers learn a lot more by going out and seeing something and learning from someone else who’s done something compared to a group that might come in and say, right, this is how it should be done.

The catchment group, that farmer-led initiative, has a lot more clout than we give it credit for. It’s easy to see what’s going on in our area, especially. We’ve got King Country River Care down the road. West Waikato catchment just to the west of us. Our catchment, Whangapē, leads into a freshwater lake that goes into the Waikato River.

We have our challenges here, and it’s great to see a key group of people getting together and bringing other people in and saying, hey, this is what we’ve done. What do you think? And we have some informal days where people just bring their own packed lunch in a thermos and we’re just going to have a look at what people have done. I think the value in that for other farmers is to say, oh, gee, it’s not actually that hard to go and maybe just identify an area.

Now I’ve met all these people who have done a bit of work like that. Maybe I can ask them instead of asking the council if they’re nervous about getting the council involved or whatever. It is farmer-orientated action approach. Some of the things that we’ve talked about in the last month or so, it’s like, how do we go around and help other people plant out or give them advice without any external influence at all?

I spent four days planting natives last winter, and it’d be great just to spend half a day doing that and having a group come over, and then I can go and spend half a day somewhere else. I think that collaborative approach is probably a lot more beneficial for a lot more than just putting plants in the ground. It’s having a yarn and having a chat and talking about all the challenges that everyone has had.

Reflecting on Kellogg.

BG: You’ve had a month or so or so to recover from the Kellogg experience. How are you feeling about the whole thing? What was the experience like?

TO-R: It’s funny. I almost put it out of my head before Christmas. Then last week I thought, it’s actually stimulated a whole lot more thinking about the process and the project, what I learned. I think that’s one thing that Kellogg does really well, by having these blocks, you get bombarded with information and all the cool stuff that goes on, then you get a chance to go away and think on it. And then also the project in the background as well.

It just really changed my way of thinking about things and really engaging in a different way of interpreting information, I guess, for lack of a better word. And even now, I’ve got my little blue book, and I sat back and read it just so I was doing a bit of prep for this over the last couple of days, and just picked up some little bits. I seem to be using it more often than not. Some leadership programmes, you go and you do it for a day, and then I think after the second or third day, you might retain 20 % of it.

The way the Kellogg Programme was designed was just so good at reinforcing some of those things you learned before. And the crew that you end up with in your cohort. We’ve got such a wide range of people from the top of the north to the bottom of the south, and not just beef farmers! Outside my comfort zone, we’ve got dairy, we’ve got horticulture, we’ve got the wine industry, we’ve got everything going on.

It’s just a great opportunity to be able to get someone else’s point of view. Really, over those four or five days you’re together (during phases), you can really drill down into what they’re thinking and what they see the world as and share some good ideas. Yeah, no, really fantastic. We haven’t even got into mentioning the people we get to meet as far as presenters. There’s some absolute gold that we pulled out of there.

BG: Just for our listeners, I must admit that I was part of Tim’s Kellogg cohort, but I promise that all of his thoughts are his own.

TO-R: I was going to mention gentleman as well, but I wasn’t too sure if we were sharing that information. That’s great. It was an absolute blast.

BG: Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? How’s the year ahead looking for you? You got any big plans, working on any projects or just focusing on the farm? A bit of both?

TO-R: As far as we’re really We’re trying to develop our catchment, so we’ve got a catchment coordinator on board. That’s been really interesting because it’s moved me away from the day-to-day running, and now I’m looking after that part. The farm is going fantastically.

We instigated Halter a couple of years ago, so we’re increasing our stocking rate. We’re trying to balance the environmental impact of that versus the economic impact. And just trying to bring the farm up to the next level. So it’s an exciting time, and I’m really enjoying it. Excellent.

BG: Thanks, Tim.

TO-R: Thanks, Bryan.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders’ podcast presented in Association with Farmers Weekly. For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, the Horticulture NZ Leadership Programme, the Engage Programme and the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz.

Lisa Rogers – on Rural Leaders, rural leadership, and on potential.

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In this episode of Ideas That Grow, Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, talks to Lisa Rogers, outgoing CEO of Rural Leaders. 

Lisa reflects on her nine-year tenure, the growth of Rural Leaders, and the lasting impact of programmes such as Kellogg and Nuffield.

She highlights leadership development, collaboration, alumni influence, and the organisation’s vital role in building confident, capable leaders for New Zealand’s food and fibre sector.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly:
Welcome to Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of the Farmers Weekly, and we have a very special guest this time to see out 2025. It is the outgoing, as we now know, Chief Executive of Rural Leaders, Lisa Rogers. Kia ora Lisa, how’re you going?

LR: Lisa Rogers, CEO Rural Leaders:
Kia ora, Bryan. I’m going really well, thank you, as we head into the final phase of what has been another really productive year for Rural Leaders.

BG: Now, you’ve been with the organisation more than a decade, and about two and a half of as the Chief Executive, how does it feel to be stepping away?

On Rural Leaders and Kellogg.

LR: It’s bittersweet in some ways because I’ve got a fantastic team and I’ve met so many amazing people throughout our sector over the nearly nine years that I’ve been with the organisation, and it’s been very hands-on all through that time.

But at the same time, really excited for moving into a new chapter for myself, but also know that the team is just in such a great spot in the organisation as well. I think that’s one of the best legacies that any leader can leave, is knowing that the organisation can just keep hurtling along in a way that’s actually going to make everyone proud of what we’re doing.

BG: My apologies there. I added a couple of years to your age.

LR: Oh, yeah, that’s all right. Sometimes it feels like it’s been decades. In a good way.

BG: Now, I’m a member of the alumni. I can tell that we do age people prematurely.

LR: You had an awesome time as a Kellogger. How have you found that experience afterwards? How did it change you, Bryan?

BG: It changed me massively, to be honest. You have a narrow view of yourself and what you’re good at, and you don’t know whether that can translate into bigger things, I guess. The course, the specific things you learn, but also just the talking to people and meeting people and that thing, it makes you realise that, yes, you can do big things, and actually that skill set that you have is really valuable. Yeah, no, it’s really cool.

On potential.

LR: Yeah, the amount of personal growth that we see in people is extraordinary. And that’s the biggest satisfaction that I take out of all of my time is watching these people who, in my opinion, like buds of a flower where they’re just all potential. And they actually realise that going through. But a lot of them, it’s happening so slowly that they don’t always realise until they get to the end. And then they reflect and they go, wow. And it’s that sense of being able to have self-confidence in that being self-aware is what we absolutely love in our programmes, and actually for the sector as well.

I think a lot of our people in Food and Fibre are a fairly low key about their own ability, and they may not have always been in environments where that’s actually been celebrated or highlighted. To be able to bring that out in people is just extraordinary and show them that they’ve got all this value and knowledge to contribute as well, which is cool. As an aside, we often do a survey on who’s doing what around the sector.

Alum from our programmes are just hugely represented in leadership positions throughout food and fibre sector, which is really important because otherwise, we will have the same people being, dare I say, worked to death slowly.

It’s massively important for these people to be coming through and have the confidence to start stepping up into roles where it could be governance, it could be politics, it could be leadership in an organisation, all sorts of things that they can contribute towards. So it’s wonderful.

On productive discussion and debate.

BG: One of the other key things, I think maybe I think about it more because of my job as a journalist, but the programmes create an environment where you can, for want of a better phrase, argue with compassion, if you know what I mean. You can thrash out these big challenges. Everyone’s coming from a different place, but everyone respects everyone else.

LR: Yeah, I think setting the ground rules nice and early around that in our programmes, but also the people that are selected to attend these programmes as well. They have a little bit more of that social understanding of how to actually do that. Having what are really productive conversations and debates, but everyone can go out and have a beer at the end of the day, is such a mature and enlightened way of being able to thrash out these ideas, because if we can’t do that, then everyone just sits in their own little corners, don’t they? And we get nothing done as a sector. I suppose underlying that is collaboration, really, isn’t it? But it’s without actually using collaboration as the word. It’s just inherent in everything that we actually do, which is so good.

BG: I guess related to that, most people are pretty familiar with the Kellogg and the Nuffield programmes. But of course, that discovering new perspectives on our world and our food production sector, that really fits into some of the other programmes you have, like the Value Chain Programme.

On Rural Leaders’ recent history.

LR: So when I reflect, as I am at the moment. I started nine years ago, Anne Hindson, who set up New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust as the first CE, did an amazing job of bringing together two of our most iconic programmes in the sector, so Nuffield Farming Scholarships and the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme. Both of them had been going for a long time.

We’ve just celebrated 75 years of Nuffield Farming Scholarships in New Zealand. They needed a bit of a refresh in being able to bring in both programmes together gave them a new lease of life, as it were. I started working with Anne, and that was an amazing opportunity to start from the ground up with an organisation. And then as we’ve gone along, we had Chris Parsons join us in 2020, and he pushed the accelerator, on that and said, there’s more that you can do, and gave us the vision to actually see how that could be possible. That was awesome as well to start accelerating at quite a swift rate of knots. But since then, and under my tenure, we now run five different programmes in the calendar year.

Kellogg gets run twice, and then we do quite a few bespoke programmes as well. Those bespoke ones are usually a spin-off of what our Engage programme is. It is a joint venture with us in Lincoln University, and that is all around capability for people coming into the sector, but it’s also about continuous learning and improvement for different organisations throughout the sector as well.

We’re doing some really neat stuff around that that’s short and sweet, so different to our longer, traditional programmes. There’s a real need for that in the sector. We’ve got all the fantastic contacts and people who give us their time because they value what Rural Leaders does. I think that’s one of our biggest legacies that we’ve got, is that people understand the value of what we do.

On collaboration.

So as a result, we’ve got this amazing stable of programmes, and we love working with other organisations as well. So every now and again, we get the opportunity to partner up with some of our other friends in the sector or offer opportunities to attend our programme as ways of increasing that applying for newer people into the sector, for example, working with Young Farmers, Federated Farmers, and Dairy Women’s Network.

Having this big ecosystem or a whanau is It’s amazing for us to get to know all these different people. There’s room for all of us in the sector. Nearly 380,000 people in the sector. I think if you can’t find a space in a niche for everything, then there’s something really fundamentally wrong. We fully get that. Times are tough at times for our producers. The first thing that can often have a line put through it is training and development. We get that because sometimes it really does come down to those last few dollars.

I think most people understand the value of what we’re doing. To our credit in the sectors as well, and our investing partners with whom we literally couldn’t do this without them. We’ve seen through COVID, we’ve seen through tough times out there for return on farm, and people are still valuing that development and that leadership training and experience people are getting through our programmes.

BG: One amazing thing I’ve just clarified in my head, you do these big projects as part of the Kellogg or Nuffield Programme. As someone who’s done post-grad tertiary qualifications before, that’s all well and good, but with the Kellogg Project, especially, it seems like it’s just not for you because you’re contributing to a pool. It has ramifications for your small wedge of the pie, the bit of food production you work in, and for the sector as a whole. It’s more you’re doing it for something bigger than your own.

On alumni and their research.

LR: Too right, Bryan. We see our alumni and our reports as our two biggest treasures of troves, as it were. Actually, one of the team, Matt Hampton, did a bit of digging the other day and realised that we’re in the top five (holders) of rural research reports that are sitting with any one organisation in New Zealand.

They’re free for everyone to access. They’re sitting there on our websites, and a lot of them are incredibly topical years after being written. The way for us to keep pushing those and making sure that they’re available and through different tools that we’ve got available on our system is extraordinary.

There’s about 1,500 alumni in total for the Rural Leaders programmes, which when you think that Nuffield has had about 194/195 in total in 75 years, It just goes to show it’s a pretty special group of people. We don’t like to think of ourselves as being in any way exclusive or anything, but we are special. The value that our alumni get over the years when they reflect on that is something that we’re seeing through people approaching us for legacy payments and gifting as well, which you get that at a university level.

You don’t always see that in our programme that you’ve done with an organisation. We are incredibly thrilled to be able to be part of that. But in my nine years, I reflect, I’ve had direct contact or seen over 400 Kelloggers go through. I’ve had at least 40 Nuffielders do their programmes as well, and countless others for Value Chain and Engage and the HortNZ Leadership Programme. The touch points with our alumni are incredibly important and very special to me. It’s been quite a, not bittersweet, but satisfying to think that we’ve had a really positive impact on so many people around the country.

BG: I guess looking big picture, given some recent struggles in terms of big challenges in our sector, there has been a lot of naval gazing about how we develop leaders, how do you go about it? Do we set our future leaders up well to succeed or do the people who give them the mandate, understand what they’re doing, all these big things. Obviously, Rural Leaders is one of the big pipelines of leadership skills and strategies, that sort of thing. What’s your take on where we’re sitting at the moment?

LR: I think it’s always going to be something that needs focus continually. You can’t take your foot off the accelerator. To bring people through into those leadership roles is vital. I also believe strongly, but in a really positive way, that our Māori scholars are also in demand.

We need a lot more of our fantastic Māori Kellogg and Nuffield Scholars to step up into these roles and encourage that, but they will do that in their own way in their own time. We’re here to support, of course.

BG: I guess I speak for every person who’s done a Kellogg or a Nuffield to say thank you for your leadership of the programmes over time and wish you best in whatever you choose to do next.

LR: I’m laughing with some of my friends and saying I’m having a gap year at last. But no, certainly we’ll be looking to be back into it again by April, May. That’s when I’ve got something organised. But in the meantime, going to be enjoying a fabulous summer off. And those who know me all know that that probably involves a bit of golf and lots of time with family and friends. So couldn’t be happier. But also my team here know that if they ever need to know where something is or something that they were thinking about a while back, they can always ring me.

But yeah, I’ll definitely leave with a lovely smile on my face because I know that the organisation is in great heart and thriving. Yeah, so awesome.

BG: Excellent. Thanks, Lisa.

Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders’ podcast presented in Association with Farmers Weekly. For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarship, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, the Engage Programme and the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz.

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

Listen to this episode of Ideas that Grow, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

In this episode of Ideas That Grow, Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, talks to Dr. Victoria Westbrooke, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Land Management and Systems at Lincoln University.

Victoria discusses the Engage Programme, a three-day professional development initiative run in partnership between Lincoln University and Rural Leaders, designed to bridge the gap between agribusiness professionals and on-farm realities.

Victoria offers keen insight into why providing contextual farm knowledge to technology specialists, researchers, environmental professionals, and policy-makers is crucial for helping them apply their expertise effectively.

Episode Transcript

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly:
I’m your host, Farmers Weekly editor, Bryan Gibson. This week, we’re talking about one of the specialist programmes Rural Leaders offers, the Engage programme run in conjunction with Lincoln University.

With me to discuss it is Dr. Victoria Westbrooke. Kia ora, how are you going?

Dr. Victoria Westbrooke, Senior Lecturer Department of Land Management and Systems, Lincoln University:
Great, thanks.

BG: Good. You’re a senior lecturer at Lincoln. What do you focus on there and what’s your work like?

VW: I’m only focused on farm management. I teach both undergraduate and postgraduate level. I also really enjoy teaching a class on consultancy and extension, again, at the undergrad and postgrad level. That class is really about students being able to use the information they’ve got at Lincoln and work with farmers and others to put their knowledge into practise when they leave Lincoln and to go out into the real world to work.

BG: What was your journey to Lincoln like? What’s your career background?

VW: Well, I actually did my degree at Lincoln a few years ago now. I then spent the first 10 years working as a farm consultant in the Waikato and then worked with AgResearch. So, helping translate science and research into practise. I enjoyed helping farmers reach objectives and just seeing that translation. I think New Zealand is really good at that, and it was great to be a part of it.

The next 10 years was cool. That was overseas. I spent a couple of years in UK, having a look at UK farming systems and indulging in my passion of travel. We then moved to Australia, where I did my PhD and had a look at some farm systems there, which were completely different, merging on tropical systems.

For the last 10 years or so, I’ve been lecturing at Lincoln, again in farm management and extension and doing some research on the side as well. I enjoy working with students and seeing their journeys as they grow.

BG: Did you always know that the food and fibre sector would be where you would work?

VW: I guess so. I really enjoy growing things. I’m a keen gardener and have this most wonderful garden at home, which I’m very lucky for. Love seeing people grow too, seeing ideas work on farms, love seeing farmers get where they want go. That sort of thing gives me a real kick.

A partnership to develop stronger connections with farmers.

BG: Rural Leaders has a pretty close relationship with Lincoln University. Tell me a little bit about how Lincoln contributes to the Rural Leaders programmes.

VW: I guess I can talk about the Engage one as a specific example. What I saw is we had a need for some really good professionals in the sector that may not necessarily have had a farm background. I’m talking about technology people, some researchers, environmental people. I thought, how can we welcome them into the sector and give them some background or context to New Zealand farming systems to turbocharge the knowledge and expertise that they already have. How can we help them to apply it.

When I was working on that, I thought Rural Leaders would be the ideal group to work with. They’ve got a good track record. I found them really excellent. We could sit down throw ideas around. That’s how it worked for me in my situation was just having their expertise, a very strong track record, strongly networked into the industry. For me, they were the ideal partner.

BG: Yeah, I guess one of the key challenges that our food and fibre sector has is that there’s often a feeling among farmers in the field that some of the bureaucrats or other people who are agribusiness professionals or at least having an input into how farming is done in New Zealand, some of them don’t have that knowledge of what it’s like to actually implement these things in the field every day.

Knowledge, confidence and connection in agriculture.

VW: The people that we’ve worked with through Engage, who have participated, are keen to work with farmers and help them work well in New Zealand Inc. That passion is really there. Part of this programme is, how can we help them with some of that context in a way that suits their professional lifestyle and their professional requirements and get them connecting directly with farmers, not through two or three other links.

Some form of experiencing the farmer’s challenges. Initially, I had thoughts of participants spending a day with a farmer in their ute. I’m not sure that was particularly practical for everybody. Again, working with rural leaders, we were able to mould that working with farmers and talking directly with farmers into a three-day, doable programme for everyone that got some of that close connection.

For example, one of the participants was actually staying with me. She came from Wellington, hadn’t spent a lot of time on farms, and simply getting her rugged up to go out for a day on farm in July – she experienced the environment the farmer worked in. Simply making sure she had gloves, hat, mittens, and that kind of thing. That was something that you can’t read about or doesn’t normally land if you read about it. But if you’re going out for a day, it does.

BG: You mentioned people being Wellington-based. A lot of people who are decision-makers or policymakers, that sort of thing, are in the cities. Having that first-hand experience of the farming life must make them a lot more confident or at least know that their day-to-day work will land better with those who are having to implement it.

VW: Yeah, it just provided a real background and that lived experience. We’ve got the Engage programme at three days. The key is the middle day, actually going on farm. They’ve spent a day working together in a discussion group format that Rural Leaders does very well. Then it’s onto a bus and going out to our wonderful host farmer. We’ve had Malcolm Cairns and Hamish Marr. The morning’s out on a mixed arable operation, family-based. Then the afternoon has been going out to Matt Iremonger’s which is more of a focus on dairy and technology.

On one of our first programmes, a lot of the participants were just quite keen to do a bit of calf feeding. We were going to talk about some really high-brow stuff. They saw the calves and they really enjoyed it. Seeing Matt operate Halter, we turned up when the cows were to go for milking. We stood in the paddock and Matt and his manager at the time were driving halter and we could see it. Seeing it then talking about the people who are actually working with it, seeing the cow’s reaction, just that really one-to-one or based experience is really important and really enjoyable.

What to expect from the Engage Programme.

BG: If someone signs up for the Engage programme, maybe just talk through what they can expect when they’re doing it.

VW: Firstly, it’s a really welcoming environment that Rural Leaders provides. It’s facilitated. There’s lots of discussions. It’s not a talk at or dare I say lecture type environment. We definitely didn’t want that. These people are professionals with really impressive skills and expertise. It’s more of a discussion, not a ‘talk to’.

Rural Leaders, through their networks, have got some excellent people for the first day, providing an overview of the global perspective of agriculture. We’ve got some people that wear both a farmer hat and professional hat talking about challenges farmers faced.

Then I talk about farming systems and farm finances. This is very much from the farmer perspective, and as much as possible, there’s people that are actually farmers and involved in there. We’re talking about the whole Ag sector. Often, we work in our own particular area that we’re passionate about. I like Ag extension and consultancy type things, but it’s important to look at the whole package because farmers are faced with a whole package, not just fertiliser, which we may work in, or environment that we may work in. Often, there’s a group dinner, and the discussions there are probably just as important as those held during the day.

Participants have actually met people from different parts of the sector as well. The highlight for me has always been the day on farm, which I’ve just briefly discussed. So out in the bus, take lunch, and talking directly with the farmers. We go and have morning tea with them. They take us around their farm. The farmers are experienced talking to groups, but they’re still at the coalface. Those visits tend to go a little bit into the areas that participants are interested in. The final day is two-thirds of a day. There’s a talk about reflection about what they found on farm, Māori land ownership and perspectives. That’s a really good session. Then we talk about rural communities. The reason for that is, again, looking at the whole picture that farmers are sitting within not just one particular aspect. Then there’s finishing up looking at environmental consulting, but that can vary depending on the group.

Looking at the whole farming system.

BG: You mentioned the rural communities. That’s really important because I think some people sitting off remotely would view a farm as a set of financial budgets or a catchment for nutrients and water cycling and that sort of thing. But in actual fact, it’s a place where a family lives. There are neighbours, there are schools, there are rugby clubs. Those things are what sustains farming communities.

VW: Yeah, it’s that whole system, that environment, looking at it, that’s really important. I think we get passionate about as a profession, our own particular area. This is a chance to look at the whole system from a farmer’s perspective. You may get an appreciation of where your particular passion area sits within the farmer’s world type thing. Why are they not as passionate as you about your area? Well, this is where it sits for a farmer and how it fits with their bigger thing.

We had one person who is looking at offering a technology service on farm, and he went away delighted because he could then see where his technology offering could fit for farmers, what from a farmer’s perspective might spin their wheels, save them time, whatever. He said, Okay, he will now develop his offering in that way to fit more with what a farmer may actually want. He understood why they may be reluctant to take his technology offering from his business.

BG: That’s amazing because you see it time and again, someone turns up with what they feel is like the latest game-changing bit of tech that’s going to change farming. But when it actually comes to implementing it on farm, they perhaps haven’t had that close contact to know if it’s working in with the other things that happen day to day on a farm.

VW: Yeah, it’s this massive load of cogs all in to react and big clockwork mechanism in an old analogue clock. They all interweave together.

Looking closer at the Engage Programme.

BG: One of the things that comes up-time and again in these chats I have with people who have been involved in Rural Leaders programmes is that the course itself is great, but one of the great pieces of value you get from it is the network and the connections you make while you’re on the course. That seems to be the case here, too.

VW: It’s not as long as Kellogg or some of the other courses. It is a three-day course. That was deliberate because when we did our initial research, we got strong feedback that because it’s a face-to-face course, we had to recognise the time limitations people have in professional life. That’s why we came up with the three-day programme because we did want to keep it face-to-face.

Rural leaders are passionate about that, which I agree with, because then you can actually talk directly to people. I think the group dinner and the way that it’s facilitated lets people meet from different aspects. We’ve had people that have reconnected or got a list of people that if they need somebody in this different area, they now have somebody that they can contact to do that. So, yeah, that’s another important part of sharing.

BG: When we pull back and look at the bigger picture of New Zealand’s food and fibre sector, we are having big conversations about how to develop people into leadership roles. Sometimes you can look at it as there’s farmers who come up through industry bodies, and there’s agribusiness professionals who maybe have a more academic path. The Engage system, to me, seems to be a way to bring that together.

VW: Yeah, it’s, again, the people that are passionate about the food and fibre sector have some wonderful skills and knowledge that we very much need. I’m really hoping we’ll provide them with the confidence to go on to some of those leadership roles with just that wee bit more contextual knowledge or the farmer’s view.

The other thing is some people coming on the programme work with one particular group of farmers, and this is, again, just broadening out for that background and context. So hopefully, it’s part of their leadership journey. They also know how Rural Leaders operate then through the programme, so they can have a taster of what our future work with Rural Leaders may look like. That’s useful as well, I think.

BG: Yeah, I guess it gives people a bit more empathy with the people who might be end users of either the product or the policy that they are working on, you get a better understanding of how that lands, what that means for someone’s day-to-day life, that thing.

If someone’s keen in finding out more about the Engage programme or perhaps signing up, what’s the next step for them?

VW: Rural Leaders They have an excellent website, and they have all of the details there. My understanding is the Engage programme will be running next year.

The other option is Rural Leaders have customised the programme and can do so for particular groups. For ASB, they work with their rural managers who really wanted to focus on environmental aspects. They took out the day on farm because those rural managers are constantly out on farm. That programme was adapted for them. They’ve also worked with the Ellett Trust and other groups there to develop a programme specifically for scientists and researchers to communicate with farmers. That customisation option is available as well.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders’ podcast presented in Association with Farmers Weekly. For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarship, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, the Engage Programme and the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz.

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

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Hamish Murray: Building stronger on-farm teams by getting out of the way.

In this episode of Ideas That Grow, Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, talks to Richard Green, farmer, director and 2025 Value Chain Innovation Programme alum.

Richard discusses his background and his Value Chain Innovation Programme experience.

Richard offers keen insight into why understanding value chains and value chain models is so important for anyone wanting to take advantage of the opportunities New Zealand Inc. and farming have to integrate our value chains and think globally.

Listen to this episode of Ideas that Grow, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

Episode Transcript

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly:
You’ve probably heard of the Nuffield and the Kellogg Programmes, but Rural Leaders has some other programmes it administers as well. One of those is the Value Chain Innovation Programme, which is open for applications until 23 November. The programme runs in early February (2026).

With me to talk about the programme today is Richard Green, who did it earlier this year. Richard, how’s it going?

Richard Green, 2025 Value Chain Innovation Programme.
Cool, thanks, Bryan.

BG: Tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do for a crust? Where do you live?

A diverse background in and out of food and fibre.

RG: I live just out of Christchurch, actually, in a little place called Ladbrooks, which is just on the edge of the town boundary on a few acres. But I’ve had a really interesting career to date Bryan. I’ve done lots of things, but I spent the first 10 years of my career as a farm consultant, working in the farm gate, helping businesses achieve their objectives and family farming businesses, generally.

Then the next 10 years of my career was pretty much involved beyond the farm gate, and I was involved quite deeply in the seed industry. We owned a company called Agricom, a couple of us, and we ended up selling that into PGG Wrightson Seeds. Then I ran the international business for PGG Wrightson Seeds for about five years.

Then the next The next 10 years, a bit longer actually, if I’m honest, perhaps the next 15 years, I’ve stepped out of day to day, been involved in businesses, and ended up doing a lot of governance and working across a large number of businesses. Those mainly in the agri and food sector, but a few not-for-profits and a few outside agriculture.

We’ve been deeply involved in retirement villages and commercial property and honey businesses as well, my wife and I.

BG: Yeah, so quite a diverse background. One of those governance roles you had was with Rural Leaders.

RG: Yeah, correct. When I left PGG Wrightson Seeds to stay connected with a lot of networks, I actually applied for a role. Nuffield at the time were advertising for a CE, and I applied for that role for a day a week. I did that for three years and then was involved with the trustees and pulling Kellogg into the Rural Leaders’ framework and setting up Rural Leaders. And then I was on the board for a few years after that with Rural Leaders.

I was also involved in AGMARDT and in FAR, as trustee in AGMARDT and then director on FAR, Foundation Arable Research. And both those are quite involved in Kellogg, particularly. And to speak with a lot of Kelloggers doing their projects, I think it’s absolutely fascinating, they have such good insights they get as to how the industry operates and where the opportunities are for them to add value to.

BG: The Value Chain Programme, a lot of people might not know a lot about it. That obviously offers in-depth insights into how our food and fibre sector operates, doesn’t it?

Why do the Value Chain Innovation Programme?

RG: Yes, and probably, Bryan, the more time I spend in the industry, the more I realise that we can do so much within the farmgate, and I still believe there’s lots of opportunities to improve there with technology. But a lot of the growth and the value that we can create will actually be beyond the farm gate.

The way we set an industry up to succeed, and then the way we get market signals back and align behind behaviour through the whole industry. For me, that’s why the Value Chain course, I decided this time last year, I guess, that it was something I wanted it to do.

I chair the joint venture between Headwaters and Alliance Meats, which forms the Lumina Land Programme. I’m deeply involved in that value chain. I was really looking for insights as to how do other industries operate, what’s best in class look like, even those industries that we are going really well, what would they like to change if they could wave a magic wand? I wanted to learn from everyone else that was going on the same journey as me, and so that’s why I applied.

BG: What’s actually involved when you signed up to the course? What actually happens?

What happens on the Value Chain Innovation Programme?

RG: Well, it was actually even signing up was quite an interesting process, and I assume it’s still the same, but you had to explain yourself, talk about yourself, and what you wanted to achieve out of doing the course. I probably should go back and read that again.

The process started, for us it was slightly earlier, I think this programme’s in February ’26, whereas ours was late January ’25. It involved a week of immersion in businesses and visiting businesses. I think the programme’s basically the same. We met in Hawke’s Bay on a Sunday morning, and we spent the Sunday with Professor Hamish Gow, facilitating a process talking about almost the academic view on value chains and also grounding that with his experience globally.

Those frameworks, and particularly one called the value discipline framework, that has been so helpful for me in the 10 months since then. I’ve used it so frequently as a way of thinking about value chains. Then during the week, we referred back to those models we talked about on that Sunday all the way through.

I think there’s circa 12 or 14 people on the course, all from different parts of New Zealand, all from different industries, all different ages and stages. So, actually learning their story is always a big key part of that.

And then we spent a full-on day looking in Hawke’s Bay at three different Apple businesses operating within the Apple industry, all operating slightly differently. One being TNG Global, one being Rockit, and one being Mr. Apple.

Then we drove all the way through to Rotorua that night on the bus, plus had a diversion or had an accident on the Napier Taupo Road, so we had to sit there for a couple of hours, so, we had plenty of time to talk on the bus. That’s where you really unpick the day and get everyone’s different views.

Then we spent a day and a half looking at the whole kiwifruit industry, right from R&D and new varieties, right on farm, right through the industry issues, biosecurity issues, and then deep into Zespri, or sorry, pack houses before Zespri, and then Zespri as to where their growth opportunities are, where their challenges are, and actually looking at this hugely successful industry, looking at understanding where it came from. It was a deregulated industry in the ’80s, and it was failing.

And then we went over the hill to Waikato, looked at the dairy industry, a deep-dive, the same way we did with kiwifruit, right from R&D, the milk testing station, on-farm, factories, and then where Fonterra is going. It was the Fonterra value chain we studied.

Then we also looked at the meat industry with Greenlea (Premier) Meats, and that was fascinating insight. Then we also talked about technology and how technology could disrupt value chains going forward. Then we had some case study learnings at the end of it. By the time we left on the Saturday, we were inspired, had new ways of thinking, but we were also pretty buggered!

Understanding value chains.

BG: You mentioned it earlier, as you say, lots of farmers or people in food and fibre know a lot about how to produce food on farm, how to grow grass or how to grow kiwifruit or apples, that sort of thing. But once someone comes and picks it up, a lot happens. And understanding how that works and the challenges that those who are processing and marketing our produce face, that’s really good to have a good understanding of that across the It’s a small sector, isn’t it?

RG: Yeah, and I actually now understand better also, Bryan, as a farmer sitting within the farmgate, you also need to understand who you partner with. Because how your partner is setting themselves up to win, and I use this word sitting in yourself up to win quite often because you’ve actually got to work out where your niche is right through the value chain and how you can leverage that niche to be successful. Because the profits can’t flow back to the farm unless your partner in the value chain is successful. There’s different ways of being successful. There’s no one way.

The thing we learned is some are successful because they innovate around products, and Zespri is one of them, and they have unique products, controlled by IP and they’re champions at bringing on new products to solve customer problems.

Some innovate around customers and work back from customers to solve their problems. It might be through consistency of a product or timing of delivery or something. They work back the whole value chain to solve customers’ challenges. Some, which is historically what we’ve been really good at in New Zealand, has been the lowest cost producers and providing value with a certain quality standard for the customer.

And so they are the only three areas you can win in. And the insight was you can be successful in two, but never in three. And so as a farmer, you have to know what’s your partner in the value chain, how they’re aligned themselves to win, and whether that meets what you see as you want to do, because you have to be aligned to a similar value discipline as them. So we don’t do a lot of discussion about that and talking about that because we only look at our part of the value chain.

So I think that’s what I found invaluable, and everyone on the course found invaluable, just that ability to look up and down the whole value chain and actually think about how does everyone win and how could we win far greater together if we actually work together different or better.

BG: It is so important to have that alignment of ideology, I guess. Everyone needs to know where you’re going and what your goals are. Otherwise, if you don’t get that aligned, then the chain breaks.

RG: We find that very much within our Lumina Land Programme. We’re a customer-intimacy type value chain – I worked out. I didn’t actually know that beforehand, but I probably did, but then you have a model to wrap it around. So transparency and alignment around everyone’s goals and financial incentives to align everyone around, that’s pretty important, too.

So I got considerable value and as a side note, Bryan, I always believe, and I absolutely believe, I’ve done a lot of personal development over my career, and I always tell people that there’s a 10 times return on investment. So whatever I invest, I can get 10X on that, I believe, within the next two or three years. I absolutely believe they are this Value Chain (Innovation) Programme.

I got so inspired by it I’ve committed to doing one this next January at Harvard, actually, which is a lot more expensive than the Value Chain programme, but it just has made me realise that the opportunities we’ve got as New Zealand Inc. and farming to actually integrate our value chains better and think a lot more globally.

BG: I actually never thought myself about those three ways to win, but you know it subconsciously. Giving it names and putting models and theory around it is something else again.

Think differently. Get inspired.

RG: The interesting thing is, Bryan, that all our training, my training through Lincoln, and I assume still now, and all our teachings, actually, we’re taught how to perform and operate in the operational excellence space. But it’s actually jumping that chasm and actually working back from customers and thinking of it quite differently, about marketing, about branding and around IP. We lack skills in those areas, and we lack ways to finance some of that, too. So that’s been a limitation to growing some of those business models.

I think we actually need to think a lot more like that and actually work out how we build skills in each of these. To me, there’s no right or wrong value discipline. It’s just whatever you do, you’ve got to do exceptionally well, and you’ve got to be able to carve out a niche and a point of difference from all your competitors by doing it well.

BG: In terms In terms of value chains, we quite often, in our thinking, focus on the food producer and the marketer or last seller at the end of the chain. But those things like processing the packhouses, the packaging, the transport, all that stuff, it’s not very sexy, I guess, but it’s so important.

RG: It’s absolutely critical. I can talk from experience around our Lumina Lamb, which is a partnership between the farmers with their genetics and their farming system, which is a codified farming system and the unique feed we put. Then the processor, which is Alliance Meats, and they’re processing and timely processing, where it’s all forecasted.

Also their ability to process the cuts that were required, to collect the offal when we’re trying to add value on offal and pelts, and then the transportation issues, which are huge on a global basis to get, whether it’s a container or a carton in the market. Then right through to how you partner with, in our case, chefs in food service, and how you get access to that. And yet in a big long chain, one breakdown can absolutely kill the whole chain. And so everyone’s just as important as each other, or it doesn’t work.

BG: It sounds like this programme would suit anyone in food and fibre. Everyone works in their own little space in the chain. But if you want to know about the rest of the links, then this is the course for you, I guess.

RG: What would make it really excellent, cost a lot more. But if you could get offshore and follow right back from the customer, that’s the only missing bit in that. But that’s just another level in terms of cost and time. But I think for everyone producing food, it ends up in a value chain.

Anyone who’s considering how their value chain could be optimised and having the ability to think and talk at those levels with directors, whether it’s co-ops or the companies they supply.

But even comparing and contrasting across industries. I mean, why do we see the kiwifruit industry as being successful and potentially the dairy industry versus sheep and beef? Versus the apples industry? What could we learn out of that?

Why is Rockit? What’s their target market in their niche versus Mr. Apple? How are they carving out different business models? If Anyone interested in business is really valuable. Anyone interested in sitting there saying, How do I develop skills to work out who I partner with in the future from my farm business? I think it’s very valuable.

BG: Yeah, and it has that in the field, practical, Here’s what we’re doing as a business aspect to it, but also, Hamish gives you the theory to look at it critically.

RG: Yeah, and the majority of the people in the course, when I did it last year, were practical farmers. All of us came from within the farm gate way of thinking, and we were trying to stretch ourselves beyond. That was the beauty. We’re actually all very similar from our backgrounds, although we’re from all different industries.

BG: Excellent. As I said earlier, the next value chain programme, applications are open until the 23rd of November, and the programme runs from the 8th to the 14th of February next year.

Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in Association with Farmers Weekly. For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarship, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, and the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit Ruralleaders.co.nz

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

In this episode of Ideas That Grow, Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, talks to Thomas Holmes, arable farmer and a 2024 Kellogg Scholar.

Thomas discusses his family farm’s evolution, overseas experience, his Kellogg research report and his Kellogg experience.

Thomas unpacks his report’s ‘what next’ view of arable farming in Canterbury.

He discusses profitability challenges, diversification, and integration with other sectors. Thomas advocates collaboration, mindset change, and leadership from younger farmers to adapt to climate, market, and technological shifts.

Listen to this episode of Ideas that Grow, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

Episode Transcript

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly:
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, the Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly, your host, as always. With me on the show this week, we’ve got a very recent Kellogg scholar, Thomas Holmes, arable farmer from Canterbury. G’day, Thomas. How’s it going?

Thomas Holmes, Arable Farmer, 2024 Kellogg Scholar:
Good, thank you. How are you doing?

BG: Pretty good. You did the Kellogg programme just last year?

TH: Yes, I was in cohort one in 2024, #52 was our cohort. It’s still fairly fresh in the mind.

BG: Have you recovered?

TH: I think the brain has. It’s a lot. It’s a full-on programme. You can’t really mentally prepare for it. It’s one thing going in there with all these perceived ideas, but it’s another just sitting there and listening. It’s very eye-opening. It takes a lot of time.

Family Farm Background and Evolution

BG: You’re obviously an arable farmer. Tell me a little bit about your journey there. Did you grow up on a farm?

TH: Yes. I’m a fifth-generation mixed-growing farmer in Methven. My family has been there for coming up 150 years, one of the founding families of the local township. The farm has decreased over the generations. It started off at around 6000 acres. We’re now down to about 550. It’s the journey of succession and having a farm for a long time. It gets smaller and has changed a lot.

I guess when I was on the farm full-time, we were doing mixed arable, so just doing many crops, about 300 hectares of crops, 650 bull beef. So, finishing to 600kg plus and 2000 lambs. But recently, in the last year, we’ve downscaled. Just the family farm’s left, so it’s about 220 hectares. It’s a never-ending change, really. What’s next? There’s a lot going on in the industry, and it’s working out what, individually, you can do.

Career Path and International Experience

BG: Did you always know or want to carry on the family farm?

TH: I did the typical Lincoln Uni, Ag-Sci. I went farming straight out of uni. I did various jobs overseas and here, everything from large-scale arable farming in the UK, in Canada, and a big beef finishing farm in Scotland. I’ve dabbled in robotic milking, did a little bit of organic cropping, and then worked on a large-scale farm in Dore, which gets all the processed vegetables, and then the family farm.

I’ve always wanted to be a farmer, and I think it’s a fantastic career. Obviously, at the moment, the arable industry is at a lull. I think it’s still a fantastic industry. Growing crops, growing animals, I think it’s probably the best job in the world, but it just doesn’t pay that well at the moment, so you have to do everything that you can to make it work.

Kellogg Research Focus: The Future of Arable Farming

BG: Touching on your Kellogg report, you look to see some ways for the success of arable farming in Canterbury in the future. Obviously, as you mentioned, times are pretty tough for arable farmers right now. But what brought you to that topic?

TH: I wanted to really dive into the sector. It wasn’t necessarily the dynamics. It was more about ‘what next for the sector’ because the profitability side of things has not improved for a long time. It’s been hidden with growers increasing yield to basically beat inflation, and inflation has caught up. We’re in a situation where we can’t really out-compete inflation. There needs to be more options available to growers, whether it’s different crops or different opportunities that aren’t necessarily arable.

I guess it got me thinking, ‘where do growers see themselves in the next 25-50 years?’ I was looking at my career, lifetime and beyond. It’s really easy to look a year ahead or two years ahead. But I thought, well, why don’t we just push it to 25-50, because people don’t think like that, necessarily. And this industry is very much on the point where they are at a crossroads. They need to make some real dramatic changes to actually improve the profitability for the growers to enable them to still do what they love to do, and that’s grow crops. They’re mixed, so they have animals, but predominantly, their passions are machinery and growing crops for the end users.

I think that’s what really drove me to look at ‘what next for the industry’, where are we going and where are the opportunities as a sector as growers. To work together was my thing, being involved in a few discussion groups. With FAR Growers Leading Change groups, it’s really important to have those connections and talk to growers of similar ages and stages, and some of them are of similar sizes and bigger, but they’re all in that same boat of ‘what does the arable sector look like’, because you can’t just keep on doing what we’re doing.

Farmer Perspectives: Looking 25-50 Years Ahead

BG: You mentioned that we’re not very good at thinking further out, and you were looking 25 to 50 years. What was the range of views you got when you talked to arable farmers?

TH: For a lot of them, they were taken back by that view, because at that current time, last year, we had one of the wettest harvests in history, and people were pretty, dare I say, depressed and a little bit in a slump. It wasn’t the best timing to do a Kellogg, but I knew it was going to be a challenge to talk to them. Because from my opinion, when you’re in the lowest point, you usually make some very strategic decisions because you need to. You can’t carry on doing what you’re doing, so you’ve got to get out of the hole and change. A lot of them were like, ‘we’re looking at diversification. We’re looking at off-farm income in some way, shape, or form’.

And then there was guys that were looking at doing berry fruits or apples. They looked at the analysis. At the moment, it doesn’t work for them, but they’re looking beyond arable, a lot of them. And some of the guys that I interviewed are already at that stage, they’re doing processed vegetables, they’re doing onions, potatoes, carrots, and their specialty seeds as well. But they’re looking beyond arable because the margins just don’t stack up. But they’re important to be part of any rotation. You need your cereals, you need your grass, you need clover in your crop rotation to keep the system going, but it wasn’t necessarily their money maker. It’s a harsh reality of things and I think growers understand that. There’s a lot that do deer grazing or beef animals, a lot do lamb finishing when it stacks up financially.

So they’re always doing something different to enable them to do what they love. And I think that’s the key point. And maybe that takes away the value of ‘I’m an arable farmer’, but the reality is, you’re still an arable farmer, you’re just going to be a very diverse arable farmer – more integrated with multi-different revenues coming off farm. And Arable might not bring a lot to the table. But at the core, I think that’s where people get a bit frustrated, because it’s what they love, and it’s a hard thing to watch. But you’ve got to make the right choices.

Key Recommendations: Integration and Collaboration

BG: Obviously, there was diversity of opinion amongst the people you talked to. You wrapped it all up in your report and came up with a set of recommendations?

Integration with Other Agricultural Sectors

TH: My recommendations for the industry was looking at when you become more integrated as a sector, and we’re already well-integrated into dairy with providing your specialty seeds, so your grass, your clovers, your straw. A lot do grazing. So you’re already there. There’s opportunities to be more integrated into your chicken and pig operations. I think there’s a real opportunity for the likes of your trading of straw for nutrients. The one thing that crop farmers need is nutrients to grow crops, and it might not be the usual thing, but it’s a common practise overseas to spread cattle muck and pig muck and chicken muck. And it’s not really a common practise here in the arable sense. I think it’s that trading of nutrients. It’s looking at how we can integrate into their supply chains and be part of that because, individually, Arables is not going to do it, and we need to be smart about that.

Breaking Down Competitive Barriers

TH: Another one was probably looking at collaboration. I think the big thing with the industry being so small, we’re very competitive, we’re very individualistic. We compete for contracts. It gets pretty cutthroat at points, especially when there’s not a lot of contracts around. Some clover markets, especially, are very tightly held, very contestable, and at the moment, still in a slump overseas with oversupply from Europe and America. We’re looking at another year or so of actual tough times.

I think that’s where, in the industry, groups need to actually form to collaborate, whether that’s through sharing machinery, going together to buy input costs, to go bulk, to get a little bit cheaper deals, share chemistry. That mindset, I think, really needs to change because we’re so focused on doing our own stuff, growing our own crops. When the reality is, I’m in a group of ten people, different farms within ten kilometres of Methven, and we’re all pretty similar sizes, similar operations. There’s a little bit of difference, obviously, but there’s no reason why we can’t actually work together.

You could buy a bigger machine, cultivator, and go cultivate all these guys’ crops. We’ll do the ground prep and all that stuff. You could just do that. Builders don’t just do our own thing. It’s just very set. It comes down to control, but also it’s your farm, you do what you want to do. But that’s the mindset that I think needs to change of where we can actually work in together, help each other out, actually spread the costs over a large area. And contractors do that. That’s why they’re so successful in terms of their scale, because they’ve got so much land they’re actually covering, doing various jobs with people that don’t have time.

Overcoming Traditional Barriers

TH: Farmers just don’t do that. They don’t seem to do it. I think it becomes too hard because if you own a piece of machinery with somebody and someone breaks it, then it gets into a bit of a fight on who’s paying for what. Maybe there needs to be systems in place that you can just split the costs. That’s why a number of growers are involved in it. It’s just this simple mindset change that I just don’t think is there, but it needs to be.

The Challenge of Farm Independence Culture

BG: It comes up a lot, and it’s often a hurdle that’s hard to clear in the food and fibre sector. It goes back to that traditional feeling of whatever’s inside the boundary of these fences is mine, and I am the sovereign of what happens here. People have trouble taking advice from people that maybe they don’t trust or having the government tell them how to do things. That’s a pretty hard barrier to break through.

TH: Yes, I think so. But if you go back 100 years or so, you had 50 men and women on your farm doing your work for you. Why is that any different? It’s just in a modern context. But I feel it’s just the community has changed. Over time, obviously, you’ve got different people coming in and out. Farm communities are very tight, but they’re not tight in the respect that they’re actually working together. There’s obviously aspects of it across the country, and there’s communities that are doing really well, and they do work together, but I don’t see it enough, especially in the arable sector.

I question a lot, and it’s more what can you do about it to make some of these things actually improve the bottom line? Because ultimately, it is about the bottom line for arable. I think that was the main challenge: profitability. A lot of these opportunities are about helping to solve profitability, not necessarily entirely solve the profitability issue. It’s not going to be one thing. It’s going to have to be a magnitude of things to actually make any real change.

Personal Leadership Development Through Kellogg

BG: Now, as well as the scholar report, obviously, the Kellogg programme is focused on leadership development. How has that changed you? How do you approach life and work now you’ve got these tools in the toolkit?

TH: For me, I just take any opportunity I can to do projects. For work, to use the knowledge that I’ve got, but also to just put my hand up for things. Locally, I’m involved with my local catchment group. It’s in the farm, it goes through the farm. We’ve got a bit of a potential flooding issue with the creek. It’s just actively getting involved in the community a bit more. Also just keeping involved in those Grower Leading Change groups is really important to keep a bit more stabilisation on what’s going on on the ground. For me, long term, it’s looking at opportunities in leadership. I think there needs to be more people, dare I say, my age on those boards because we are the future.

The reality is people my age and younger than me are the ones that are going to be farming in the next 35 to 40 years, 50 years. It’s actually getting their opinions across, and I think that’s probably something that I’m very passionate about, actually getting our seat at the table and getting our opinions heard because we haven’t got 30 or 40 years life experience or business experience. You’ve got to start somewhere and I think that’s really about putting your hand up and not being afraid to actually just try things. Well, this podcast. I think it’s good to be able to get your opinion across. It’s a different way of messaging, really.

The Need for Disruption and Adaptation

BG: Like you say, your studies discovered that there needed to be some change or some new thinking in the arable sector. It takes people to usher that in or help get that message across and get the wheels turning for that to happen.

Adapting to Climate and Market Changes

TH: I think so. You’ve got to disrupt the system. It’s not necessarily about criticising what the system is. It’s about actually looking at, well, ‘are we fit for purpose? Do we actually need to change?’ And the reality is we do. And I think that’s been pretty apparent in the last decade with the likes of trade, the likes of volatility we’ve had with the weather, the way harvests have been. We need to change how we do things because we’re not getting the same climatic conditions that we had in the early 1980s and 1990s. The Nor’westers aren’t as prominent. We’re not actually getting the great harvest of those days. It’s certainly not as hot where I am in summer as it used to be.

We need to change how we farm with all that technology and what’s coming for us. I think there’s plenty of other opportunities for arable to be part of that story, whether it’s plant proteins or these new food trends that are coming forward. We need to be part of that story instead of just the guys that grow grain and seed, because we are more from that. I think that’s where we need to actually put a hand up and try. I think that’s probably really taking us off the farm a bit more than we’re comfortable with, because the reality is we need to go beyond what we’re doing. It is changing your mindset and it’s not an easy thing to do.

The Value of Being Challenged

TH: For me, Kellogg has definitely changed my mindset because you become so siloed and rigid in your own thoughts because you just get so set in what you do and how you think, and you think you’re right, and you get challenged. I think it’s fantastic to get challenged because there’s so many people with different opinions from various backgrounds, it just really gives you an open mind. Because no one’s right. It’s just actually just listening to someone else’s opinion. Regardless whether you disagree with it or not, I think it’s actually just it gives you that understanding of where they’re coming from and why they think like that.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be challenged. I think that in the Ag sector in New Zealand, they need to be challenged because I don’t think they’re necessarily adapting to what is happening out there. I think it is pretty hard to change at the speed that things are going, especially with the tech and the way supply chains are working and the market’s always changing. It is hard, but we need to be a bit more nimble instead of reactive, I think.

Recommendation for the Kellogg Programme

BG: Having more colleagues with that mindset, AKA, going through the Kellogg programme, would be good, so, something you’d recommend to others?

TH: Yes, 100%. I think the Kellogg programme is a fantastic programme. It not only challenges you on your thoughts and your views, but it just gives you an eye into what the food and fibre sector is beyond your sector. You’re in it with like-minded people. It’s a really enjoyable process. I think the big part of it is actually just the networking, the talking to industry leaders in the Chatham House rules sense, where you can get some real open discussions, where you don’t get that in the real world. I think that’s one of the beauties of Kellogg. It opens a lot of doors. I got a lot of interviews just based on that I was doing Kellogg, obviously, being an average farmer helped.

But I think people just love the programme. They think it’s a really great programme. It’s a good thing to do if you want to push yourself to try something different and find a project. If you got a project that you really want to find something about, just do it. I think it’s a great thing to do. Don’t be afraid to change your mind on it either because I think you get challenged, you get on it, and it’s a good learning process.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in Association with Farmers Weekly.

Find out more about Ideas That Grow.

Hamish Gow – Inside the Value Chain Innovation Programme

In this episode of The CountryWide Podcast, Sarah Perriam-Lampp talks with Lincoln University’s Professor Hamish Gow about the Value Chain Innovation Programme, delivered by Rural Leaders.

Hamish explains how the programme takes participants inside New Zealand’s dairy, kiwifruit, apple and red meat sectors to understand how value is created, captured and shared, and why the real learning happens on the bus as farmers, entrepreneurs and industry leaders connect and challenge their thinking.

Listen to the episode below, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

CountryWide Podcast Transcript

Sarah Perriam-Lampp, CEO and Editor-in-Chief, CountryWide:
Welcome to another episode of the CountryWide podcast, and catching up with one of my favourite people, Hamish Gow from Lincoln University. Today we’re going to talk about the Value Chain Innovation Programme, something that I absolutely loved doing a few years ago. I’m sure it’s evolved a little bit from the first one?

But I’m really keen to hear about what everyone gets up to on the programme because the deadline to submit your application for 2026 is coming up soon. So, Hamish, can you tell us a little bit about the programme and how it’s evolved?

Hamish Gow, Professor, Lincoln University:
Well, it hasn’t really evolved a lot, right? Because it’s designed to give the participants a model or framework to be able to understand and evaluate value chains and how we create value in those value chains. Then we walk through the four major value chains in New Zealand, two in the livestock sector and two in horticulture.

The Four Value Chains

HG: We walk through the dairy value chain and analyse and evaluate how Fonterra creates economic value for farmers and how that comes back to them. We then walk through the Zespri value chain and look at how that brings value back to both the orchard owners as well as into the other members of it, which are the packhouses, and understand that model. We then look at the apple industry and how that creates value for the growers.

Then finally, we look at the red meat sector and understand how value comes back to farmers and producers in the red meat sector. And around the edges of that, we look at government support, regulation, and legislation, and how that’s enabled some of them and caused constraints on them, and then technology, and how that’s supporting it as well.

It hasn’t changed a lot from when you went on, the only difference is, we’ve gone in reverse. We used to start in Hamilton with the dairy sector and work to the Hawke’s Bay and end with apples. Now we’re starting in the Hawke’s Bay with apples and working our way through to Hamilton and ending with the dairy sector.

Target Participants

SPL: For those who are unfamiliar with it, this is a programme run as part of the Rural Leaders organisation (they look after Kellogg and Nuffield). It is really for quite a wide range of people, getting farmers and growers to look beyond the farm gate, isn’t it? As well as those who work in the sector to fully understand the vertical integration of a value chain.

HG: Yes, it’s aimed at both people who are directors and senior leaders within the industry. So it could be farmers, it could be people inside the processing facilities, it could be marketers who are trying to understand it, it could be entrepreneurs, as well as the government players who are supporting as well as the input providers, bankers, insurance providers, fertilisers, etc.

Core Learning Framework

HG: It really gives you this end-to-end understanding all the way from the basic inputs all the way through to understanding the market and how we really create economic value for our customer in the market. It’s also, what’s the mechanisms that we use to be able to capture that value and then share that across everyone in the value chain? And that’s the key piece is really understanding not just that this is how it all operates, but then this is the mechanisms that are used to be able to create value, capture that value, and then share that value and how that gets shared back to everyone.

And what makes some channels work in one way versus other channels work in a different manner or form. We look at three basic models of value chains.

Intellectual Property Insights

SPL: It really does open your eyes, particularly if you are quite industry-centric in your day-to-day – If you’re really in the dairy industry or sheep and beef and don’t really understand as much about horticulture. I took away so much, and there’s lots of little gems, Hamish, but one of them was I’d never appreciated plant licencing and breeding and how that IP is controlled and how that flows through the value chain.

HG: Absolutely. In the horticulture industry, that’s the key way that they capture value, because it stops people trying to copy them. We’ve got two different models. We’ve got a model that operates within the kiwifruit industry, which is everyone combined within Zespri. And then Zespri owns the IP. Zespri doesn’t own a lot of things, but it owns all the IP around the plant variety rights for the gold kiwifruit, for the Sungold. And then it also operates in a slightly different model in the apple industry. And that’s the real two key pieces. It’s those plant variety rights which give them protection for an extended period of time and allow them to build a value chain that creates economic value, allows them to capture it and then return it back to the owners of their IP. But also they have a sharing mechanism which allows them to share it across the growers and the other players along that channel.

Rethinking Value Creation

SPL: The other major thing I realised, which is really interesting timing with the sale of Fonterra’s consumer brands, is how a lot of these supply chains are built to not actually have value, because it’s more around operational efficiency and that is the value.

HG: Yes, lots of people are only now coming to the grips with this. In New Zealand government, we’ve had this whole idea about value add, but we don’t actually understand it. Our naïve perspective of value add, is just put a brand on things and sell it to a customer. But there’s a whole lot of value to be created by being the provider of the highest quality ingredients. Therefore, that allows your customers, the processor/food manufacturer, to be able to run their systems a lot more efficiently and deliver a lot more consistent product to their customer.

It’s very expensive to go and work with a final consumer, but stepping back from that and delivering the best quality inputs to them, which are really, really consistent, allows them to operate way more efficiently. There’s huge value opportunities there, which is what Fonterra does. Fonterra is this amazing producer of high-quality specialty ingredients that the top food companies absolutely require from us. And that’s always one of the ‘a-ha moments’ that comes out of it. People realise we don’t actually need all of these brands. We actually spend a lot of money on them.

Global Market Reality

HG: It’s easy to do branding when you’re selling to your own domestic consumers. But New Zealand is the only developed country in the world for which their primary market is not a domestic consumer. Therefore, there’s 180 countries in the world that we sell to. And there’s thousands, well, actually tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of different markets across all those countries that we sell to. It’s very difficult from a branding standpoint to really understand who that customer is and what we need to do with them.

They’re in a different country, different culture, different language, different institutional structures. Often, it’s an ingredient space that actually creates us the greatest value. That’s where we’re creating most of our economic wealth in New Zealand, without us knowing that.

Preparation for International Engagement

SPL: For those who have been fortunate to go in market overseas, what I’ve taken away from it, is how you’ve structured it so that the Nuffielders do the Value Chain tour before they do go overseas, which means that you actually understand your own backyard. So, you’re informed on a value chain before you go in market overseas. Many of us don’t actually understand that piece, do we?

HG: Yes, we often know our little wee piece of the value chain, but we don’t actually understand how a whole value chain operates or works. We know how to make money in our piece, but we don’t actually understand how all the pieces of the puzzle all connect together and collectively how they create value. Then, because we don’t understand that, we don’t actually understand our adjacent value chains, how they operate and how they make money.

Mental Models for Analysis

HG: And so we make assertions about them, which are really assumptions, and they’re actually incorrect. And so it’s only when you walk and understand those different models that they have, that you’ve got this ability to be able to engage and learn and understand how you make money in your value chain. But then you can start looking at other value chains that are operating out there in the world, both in New Zealand, but also overseas. Because effectively, we simplify it down to basically three different models that run.

And that’s the key thing. Once you get it down to that level, you can look at almost any value chain and go, ‘that’s this type of value chain. How’s that different from the ones we’ve looked at? It’s different in this way.’ Suddenly, you’ve got this mental model that you can use and make sense of.

Programme Success Stories

SPL: What have been some of the highlights for you on the programme? It’s been three times you’ve run it? If you think about the people that have been through the programme, that you’ve seen real ‘a-ha moments’ or anything that’s come from it that’s been impressive?

HG: We’ve had a couple of key players who came through, were both chairmen of the boards of a startup on this last programme with a range of farmer suppliers coming into it. They had a massive answer to a-has, and you watched them as their mind changed with the way that they could articulate what they were doing and how they could share that to all of their constituent farmer suppliers.

But also how they could communicate what they were doing to their key industry partners who were processing for them to help them understand how they were doing stuff and the way they were running their business model and value chain and how that differentiated from their market partners, so they weren’t actually in competition with each other.

Organisational Alignment

HG: So that was a really important a-ha, and they suddenly had the power to be able to have a conversation with all those different stakeholders and help them understand how they were different and what that meant for them strategically. And what that meant for them as far as investment goes, how they could communicate with everyone. I’ve watched that happen since the last programme.

They came through… it was this a-ha moment. Now you just watch how their communication and the alignment and getting everyone to… it’s like a rowing eight. They’ve got everyone rowing together in the same direction at the same stroke rate, and they’re just pulling ahead as a result of that. It’s fantastic. It’s got everyone throughout the organisation, all the way from the board through management, to all of their strategic partners, all the way back to the farmers.

They are now all lifting together as they row that eight forward all in the same direction. Before, they were actually going against each other and they were crabbing at times. Now, it’s a smooth drive forward.

Learning Environment

SPL: Lovely analogy. The power is in the visits, but the magic happens on the bus, isn’t it?

HG: Yes, the experience where you look at things is on the visits, but the power and the real engagement and magic is on the bus and the group of people on the bus. The bus becomes our learning environment, it’s our safe haven. What I act as is the ‘honest broker’ to be able to facilitate the discussion and the debate as we go on the bus and we unpack what we’ve seen. But we also help set up what we’re expecting to see. Then people go in there and they look at it and they go, ‘actually, that’s not what I expected’.

Then we unpack where that conflict occurs. That’s really powerful. It’s those discussions and debates as you go along on the bus, that’s where all the power is. That’s where everyone has that real aha moment as they make sense of that. And not only make sense of what they’ve seen, but it’s this application of ‘how does that apply to my business that I run and my value chain that I’m operating in’ and asking hard questions about how you do things and how they need to operate.

Programme Details and Networking

SPL: And you make some fantastic friends. I ended up going to one of their weddings because he married my friend. So that was really nice. But really great networking as well of different people across the city that you probably wouldn’t meet otherwise. For those who are interested, it will run between the 8-14 of February, 2026. Applications will close on the 23rd of November 2025. We’ll put a link in the description below so that you can get all of the information.

It is a five-day tour, and as Hamish said, starting in the Hawke’s Bay and ending in Hamilton. You’re with your group the entire time, staying at various places, and then on the bus, as he was saying there. Thank you very much for your time, Hamish. I look forward to following who ends up on the programme next year. There’s lots of familiar faces, and just Hearing from them firsthand afterwards is pretty inspiring, and just around how much their mind has been blown.

To apply for the 2026 Value Chain Innovation Programme (runs 8-14 February) head to the Rural Leaders site.

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

In this episode of Ideas That Grow, Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, talks to Richard Dawkins, 2023 Kellogg Scholar and Marlborough sheep and beef farmer. Richard is also the new Meat and Wool Chair for Federated Farmers.

Richard discusses his family’s diverse 602-hectare farm operation, which includes sheep, cattle, forestry, and viticulture. He shares his experiences abroad and how returning home reignited his passion for farming.

Richard speaks about his Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme journey and research on lamb and ewe mortality, emphasising the need for better data and body condition scoring.

The discussion also covers leadership, collaboration, and the importance of timing when engaging in personal development.

Listen to this episode of Ideas that Grow, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

Episode Transcript

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, the Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. This week on the show, we have the new Meat and Wool Chair for Federated Farmers and Marlborough Sheep and Beef Farmer, Richard Dawkins. Richard, how are you?

Richard Dawkins, Farmer, 2023 Kellogg Scholar:
Yeah, good. Thanks, Bryan. The sun’s threatening to shine here, so we’ll take that as a win.

BG: Yeah, being pretty wet down your way, hasn’t it?

RD: Yeah, absolutely. We recorded 138mls in 24 hours, which was a record for us since 1954, but certainly, none of the damage compared to over the hill.

Farming to suit your environment.

BG: You farm up behind Blenheim, and you’re the latest in a long line of people in your family who have farmed there.

RD: Yeah. We’re 30 kilometres southwest of Blenheim, up the Waihopai Valley, or the Avon Valley, just off the Waihopai. I’m the third generation on the land, and my children will be the fourth. My wife, Jess, and I came home a decade ago and since have taken over and have three children.

BG: Excellent. Can you just Can you tell us a little bit about your farming business?

RD: We’re 602 hectares. The livestock side of the business is a composite ewe flock. We’re about 60% sheep and 40% cattle. We also do Jersey bulls, service bulls for the dairy industry, and some Friesians, which are just a straight fattening proposition for the works.

Our motto here has always been, you farm to suit your environment. You don’t modify the environment, you modify your farm systems to suit. We start lambing next week, late July, and main weaning is in November, and we sell all the lambs at weaning.

Last year was a record for us, actually. We sold 96% of the lambs straight off mum at 43. 5kg’s. Composite ewe flock, Jersey Bulls, a few Friesians, but we also have 20% of the property in farm forestry and 135 hectares of viticulture.

BG: Quite a diverse operation you’ve got going.

RD: Yeah, you have to be these days, don’t you? My father said in the late ’80s, 65% of his income was from wool. We’re now down under 1%, so yeah, just need to diversify those income streams a bit.

BG: Now, you mentioned you came back to the farm about a decade ago. You grew up there, I guess. What did you do after school?

Seeing the world before farming.

RD: Jess and I spent significant time in Western Australia. Funnily enough, we were in a different industry. We spent a fair amount of time working in the mines in WA near Kalgoorlie, and Jess was further north in Karata. But then we spent time in the United Kingdom as well, and it was really interesting to see their farm systems. I did a bit of labouring on farms. I worked on a dairy farm, more of an indoor system over there, and did a harvest up in Norwich, drove a lot of tractors.

So, yeah, that was a good experience. Good experience in Australia as well, but really glad to be home now and setting the foundation for the future, I suppose. We’re certainly not planning on going anywhere.

BG: Many, many, New Zealanders in their 20s head off to see the world. In a farming sense, do you think it’s good for people to go off and see, say, the likes of how you did a harvest a Norwich or a dairy farm in the UK?

RD: I think it is, Bryan, but there’s opportunity costs to everything isn’t there. Coming home in my mid-20s and seeing fellows in their teens who were a bit more advanced than me and had left school and gone straight into farming. It took a fair bit of catching up, which was a bit of a wake-up call.

You spend your childhood on the farm, but boy, there’s a big difference between helping dad shift some sheep and doing the tailing and things and helping in the sharing shed versus actually running a farm business. It took some catching up.

That’s what’s been fantastic about Federated Farmers is getting those farmer networks and rapidly expanding your knowledge. But at the same time, look, learning other industries, living in other countries, that was really valuable too.

Building knowledge and leadership skills.

I’ll tell you one positive was when we did come home, we were so full of enthusiasm. We hit the ground running and haven’t stopped, to be honest. Whereas some of my friends who did leave school and go straight into Ag, some of them are just thinking it’s a big wide world out there. Maybe I could go and try something else. I mean, it’s up to the individual, isn’t it? But there’s pros and cons with everything.

BG: Yeah, I often think that we see a lot of exporters and processors take farmer shareholders into export markets to give them an idea of actually what it’s like there and how people buy their food and how chefs cook it, or various other things. I think that global view and getting a first-hand understanding about how the fruit of their labour here in New Zealand is used, it can be really helpful in understanding why certain things have to happen.

RD: Yeah, for sure. I was fortunate enough to go on the Silver Fern Farms and Market Tour last year. We went through China and Korea, South Korea of course. Like you say, fantastic perspectives and quite mind-blowing, to be honest.

BG: Now, you’re a relatively recent Kellogg scholar. You went through the programme just a couple of years ago?

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme experience.

RD: So 2023, Phase One, part of K49. The timing for me was perfect, to be honest, in that I’d done a lot of industry stuff by that point. I had a few connections and a reasonable understanding of the bigger picture. But look, to go into Kellogg, it just really supercharged that foundation I had.

Getting those cross-sector connections, people from all walks of life, and hearing those different perspectives as well was hugely valuable and empowering. I guess since I’ve just carried on that journey, I would find very well-invested, I must say.

BG: That network that you build and the people you meet is really important. Of course, another thing they do is you find out quite a lot about yourself, which is good to what you’re good at, what you perhaps need to invest time into improving.

RD: Yeah, look, self-awareness is just absolutely essential. That was a big thing that I took out of it. It can be very confronting, but I think you go in as a bit of an unpolished diamond, and you have those courageous conversations and have that self-awareness.

You may be smooth off some of those rough edges. But some of those things you need to embrace, too. I’ve recognised that. Hey, I’m pretty extreme in this area, and maybe I need to tone it down sometimes. But look, maybe that makes me the man for the job with certain tasks. So, embrace those things as well.

Lamb and ewe mortality, leadership, and learning.

BG: Totally. Now, of course, a big part of the Kellogg Programme is the report you write. You looked at mortality in lambs and ewes?

RD: Yeah. I called it ‘Addressing Mortality in New Zealand Lambing Systems’ because I didn’t want to just purely focus on the lambs. Mortality in ewes is a huge issue as well. The findings were quite interesting. I guess the major takeaways were there’s not actually strong data sets out there.

The actual extent and understanding of the issue is not particularly good as an industry. Probably the lowest hanging fruit for progress is simply body condition scoring and feeding.

On the farm here, we take it to the enth degree, and we lamb our triplets indoors to give them extra care and attention. But look, as an industry, I think getting those body condition scores up and getting those pasture covers up prior and post-lambing is where we’d see the biggest gains.

BG: Now, you talk about data. I guess in a lot of cases, what happens on the farm stays on the farm in some ways in terms of the snow rolls in or whatever down in the high country and losses that no one quantifies in some ways.

RD: Yeah. It’s a real catch-22, isn’t it? In that our strategic advantage, our point of difference is those outdoor lambing systems. It’s free range for sure. How do you balance the welfare aspect versus that strategic advantage? I think the absolute majority of New Zealand farmers and farm systems are geared towards that low input, medium fecundity type breeding.

We do the indoor lambing here because we’re a highly fecund composite ewe flock, and it’s pretty simple at the end of the day, isn’t it? A ewe’s got two teats, and when she’s spitting out three or four lambs, I don’t think it’s controversial to say she needs a bit more TLC.

BG: Yeah, totally. In the drive for efficiency, which has been excellent over the years in the sheep and beef sector, that’s something everyone keeps in mind, I think.

RD: Look, and these composite ewes are amazing. Those ewes that leave the shed with three lambs, their average weaning weights, the combined weight of their three lambs was 110 kilos. That was at 105 days of age. So three lambs, straight off mum to the works, that’s about the most efficient ewe in the country. They’re big ewes, they’re 80 kilos at mating. But when you’re weaning 110 kilos of lambs, it’s worth putting the effort in. I mean, that’s just 1% of the flock, Bryan. Certainly not every ewe, but it is very rewarding when you get to weaning and all your effort pays off.

BG: Your project obviously completed, submitted, but it seems to have been read by some of the organisations that matter in our sector.

RD: I won’t take credit for that, I suppose. But it’s great, really cool to see Beef + Lamb New Zealand pick up a lamb survival module now. I was involved behind the scenes, just having those discussions and organising a few things, bit of a working group. I’ve had a few podcasts and also going to have workshops around the country just focusing on lamb survival. That was one of my key recommendations. So full credit to them. It’s great to see.

Federated Farmers Meat and Wool Chair and further study.

BG: Now, obviously, the Kellogg Programme is based around growing rural leaders in our sector. You’ve come up through Federated Farmers, and you’re the new Meat and Wool Chair. So it looks like you’re taking the ball by the horns in terms of leadership roles.

RD: Like I said earlier, it really did turbocharge things. I did learn a lot, learnt a lot through the process, but I think the biggest thing it gave me was confidence. Like, look, I can go through 500 hours or whatever I invested in. I was part of those deep conversations. I understood everything, had a really good cohort, and it just gave me that confidence to push to the next level.

It made me realise, hey, you are ready for those leadership positions. But it really was a foundation. One of the biggest takeaways for me was it’s fantastic work by the Rural Leaders team. I’ve actually connected the Kellogg Programme through Lincoln and Massey, and actually you can achieve a Postgraduate Certificate in Commerce.

That actually gains you entry to a master’s-level programme. After the Kellogg Programme, I went on to studying a Master of Business, and that’s taken all of that stuff I learned through Kellogg to a whole other level. That’s a fantastic opportunity for anyone. If they’re considering it, I’d be happy to talk people through that process.

BG: That’s excellent. I didn’t know about that. How are things going with Feds? How are you enjoying being on the National Exec?

RD: Look, it has been an absolutely flat out first fortnight. I probably look a bit tired at the moment. AGM and conference, followed by a lot of conversations. Obviously, a lot of media. We’ve had our oral submission to the select committee, and then on to the Silver Fern Farms Conference and all of the governance work that goes on in the background, the advocacy, the exciting stuff, the fun stuff.

But hey, this is a fantastic organisation. You have to govern as well. So, yeah, it’s been absolutely completely flat out. I think that may slow down a little bit, but with advocacy, the work never ends, and then we’ll be full steam ahead, trying to achieve what we want to achieve for not only the meat and wool council, but obviously every member too.

BG: It’s a big job and a big responsibility being the voice of our farming sector to not only the Beehive, but also the wider population of New Zealand, I guess, that you really are the window into that world.

Putting leadership development into practice.

RD: Yeah, you absolutely are. Look, it is a real privilege. When you come under a bit of pressure and you’re finally in this position, I guess your natural style comes out, shines. I’ve just realised that I’m more of a collaborator and a facilitator of these discussions. I don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. I have a fantastic council behind me, 24 men and women who volunteer their time and seven on the executive.

I think you need a bit of courage. Courage takes many forms. It’s putting a line in the sand and saying, this is not good enough, it needs to change. You probably saw that with the oral submission, the bill as it stands, isn’t fit for purpose. But courage is also saying, hey, I don’t know everything. Can I facilitate this discussion? Let’s get four or five people in a room and work out the pathway forward.

I mean, you’re never always going to agree, but at least have that talking to a friend or someone close to you and saying, This needs to change, that needs to change. We need to tidy up this area or that area. Actually, one thing I’m struggling with, which takes a bit of courage, is just learning to delegate. As a farmer, you see a problem, you want to go and fix it. But takes a bit of courage to say, Hey, I’ve got a bit much going on, or, You’re actually better at this than me, so could you please take care of it?

Again, we’ve got this council full of enthusiasm. So, yeah, quite often they’re willing to take up that mantle. And look, it’s just hugely appreciated these people volunteering their time, not for me, but for the whole sector.

BG: If someone’s out there thinking about developing their leadership skills to maybe looking at governance or just their own personal growth, the Kellogg Programme, something you’d recommend?

Get involved, be part of the bigger conversations.

RD: Look, it is, but I think it’s all about timing. I would really I encourage people to do a bit of that local provincial, maybe it’s volunteering any leadership position, and just do a bit of that.

Be part of those bigger conversations, those sector-wide conversations. Join your Federated Farmers and get involved. Join your Beef + Lamb New Zealand, various councils or working groups they have, or your rural advisory groups, things like that. Just get a bit of experience on that side of things, then go for Kellogg.

I think if you were just starting your leadership journey, you might not get as much out of Kellogg as you potentially could. But once you’ve done that foundation work, it’s absolutely fantastic.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in Association with Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, visit the pages for Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, the HortNZ Leadership Programme, the Engage Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme.

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

In this podcast, Hugh Ritchie, 2000 Nuffield Scholar and Hawke’s Bay farmer, shares his leadership journey and insights with Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly Managing Editor.

Hugh discusses growing Drumpeel Farms into a diverse 2000-hectare operation, the impact of his Nuffield experience on his personal growth, on innovation in irrigation and strip tillage, and on the need for better water access and infrastructure.

Hugh emphasises collaboration, global learning, and the importance of leadership development as vital to strengthening NZ’s food and fibre future.

Listen to this episode of Ideas that Grow, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

Episode Transcript

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson. This week on the show, we have Hugh Ritchie from Drumpeel Farms. Gidday Hugh, how’s it going?

Hugh Ritchie, Farmer, 2000 Nuffield Scholar:
Good thanks, Bryan. And yourself?

BG: Yeah, pretty good. How are things over in Hawke’s Bay?

HR: We’ve got a very nice day. Had pretty big winds last night, which was good. I know we’re just finishing off the carrot washing harvest, and then we’ll get back into maize again. But no, it was a pretty good wind last night. But other than that, we’re good. Been a good summer for growing grass, so can’t complain.

BG: Very good. You operate a pretty diverse farming system over there.

A little about Hugh and Drumpeel Farms.

HR: Yeah, we’re just over 2000 hectares in total. We do about 800 hectares of annual cropping. So half of that’s processed vegetables. The other half is seeds and cereals with a little bit of vegetable seed production as well. And then we have 1500 bull beef on a pastoral block.

We normally finish between 8500 and 10,000 lambs – winter lamb trade as well. So that keeps the business going on many fronts. We haven’t got dairy, and we had deer, but haven’t got deer anymore. So, we do most things.

BG: Has running that operation been the bulk of your farming career?

HR: It has, yes. I left school and did a Bachelor of Ag at Massey. Production and Management was more my side. Then I came home to run the block. In those days, it was 300 hectares. We’ve grown the business quite significantly in that time as a family business. We’re reasonably proud of the fact that it’s up over 2000 hectares, and it’s quite diverse and quite intense.

We have great staff helping. I have a very good stock manager who runs the livestock site, and I tend to stick to the overall management in the cropping. It gives me a wee bit of flexibility and scale to go and do other things.

I’ve been on the Federated Farmers Board. I’ve spent some time on the Nuffield Trust, and recently on the FAR board and HortNZ board as well. So yes, I have done quite a lot of off-farm stuff as well as farming. Currently trying to get water storage across the line in Hawke’s Bay, which is proving rather tricky.

BG: Yeah, that’s been years in the making, hasn’t it?

HR: Yeah, it has.

BG: You were a Nuffield scholar in 2000?

2001: A Nuffield Odyssey.

HR: Adrian (Gault) and I travelled in 2001. I looked at irrigation efficiency and direct drilling till type systems. From there, we brought back the basis of the irrigation New Zealand design and monitoring system. I came back from a course I did at Cal Poly/University with Charles Burt, the director there, on how to evaluate irrigation systems for distribution uniformity.

Went through the Midwest and strip tillage was a big thing happening there in min till. So I brought back a strip till and worked a lot with landwise, which was a sustainable cropping programme here in Hawke’s Bay, where we developed strip till to run in New Zealand.

So, the trip itself had big impact on bringing knowledge back, which I’m pretty proud about. But equally, the trip itself, in terms of forcing you to be off-farm and allow people to run the business and do it for you also created, I suppose, opportunity within to make sure that you didn’t just then beaver away with your head down and not really looking at the bigger picture. So it was a very useful journey to go on.

BG: It sounds like it was useful not only personally for you, but in terms of the way New Zealand Food and Fibre has progressed since then.

Giving back to New Zealand food and fibre.

HR: I’d like to think that that is the core of Nuffield. It’s a personal development journey in leadership, but it’s also because it is funded by people (Rural Leaders’ investing partners), I think there’s a responsibility to bring things back that can be useful. That was the whole concept of it, to my mind, was to go and learn and explore things and bring ideas back that we could utilise in New Zealand.

I know everybody says that we lead the world in agriculture, but there’s some really clever people overseas that are more than willing to share their ideas and learning. You don’t have to re-invent the wheel. You can go and learn from people. That’s a pretty good thing.

BG: And was getting out and seeing the way farming is done in other parts of the world at that young age, good for you in terms of your way of looking at things back home?

HR: It certainly got me out of my shell. I remember driving down the interstate in the US, and 2000 was when the UK had foot and mouth. So, I moved to the US pretty quickly. And again, obviously, irrigation and direct drilling was probably their forte.

Nuffield and getting out of your comfort zone.

HR: But It was quite interesting driving in the States and I’d just see something that was interesting or something going on, and I pull over to the side of the road and jump the fence. And you could see these guys looking at you a bit sideways for a while, and eventually they’d stop and you’d go and have a chat. I wouldn’t do that in New Zealand necessarily, but over there, they probably are never going to see you again. If it went badly, you could just walk away.

But it was an incredible journey to see people, they really explained what they were trying to achieve. I visited the conservation information centre, again, because timings were out with the universities, And Dan Tauri, who was running that centre, and he just rang people up and said, hey, I’ve got this New Zealander looking at these things.

I think it’ll be interesting if we talk to you and just set up a whole lot of visits. So it was very spontaneous. Which is something we probably don’t always do a lot of – and just taking the opportunities and meeting people, and then they would send you on to somebody else. I was probably not that outgoing at that stage. And so you had to get over not wanting to push people or ask for things.

It was quite a learning journey there, but it was just amazing how willing people were to give their time and information to help. I think New Zealand reflects that and does that too. It’s a two-way street, but certainly that was eye-opening to me, just how open people were to share.

BG: You’ve gone on to take on some pretty big leadership roles in the farming sector. Obviously, Nuffield might have been a good base for that, good grounding.

Nuffield and the global perspective.

HR: Certainly, I think, as I said, Nuffield gave you that broader picture of what was happening in the world. We could sit back here and moan about things or moan about pricing. You really had to understand that we are a small part of a very big system, especially within the cropping scene in terms of direct import and things like that.

There was no point moaning about price because if someone could import it cheaper, that’s what was going to happen. We had to really get on side with how do we make our systems better, more efficient, more cost-effective, and grow that way. That was very useful.

I think coming back and sitting in Fed Farmers meetings when people were trying to give the millers or the bakers a hard time about not paying enough for wheat, and you just had to say, well, occasionally it is what it is. And so we can either agree to grow or not. But there’s no point beating the guys that are going to buy your crop, because it’s probably not going to do anything for your relationship.

BG: It’s funny. I was in a conference last week talking to someone, and they thought the goal should be that all of New Zealand’s agricultural sector should be like our arable sector, which has always been small and nimble and knows its place in the world and has innovated to make sure it’s sustainable. That’s a good model.

Innovating in the arable sector.

HR: It is. But again, I’ll be the first to admit at the moment, it’s really hard work making arable pay and sitting on the HortNZ board and looking at what IP good varieties of apples can make in the market. Or you look at kiwifruit and how well that’s going with dedicated export and serious funding around marketing and driving the supply. I mean, a really good example to follow.

I am really proud that we set up the Cultivate Ventures thing and during my time with FAR to try and create that work stream to find ideas and innovation that we can be nimble about and follow. But Certainly, we do have to, I think, do things differently going forward within the arable sector because things haven’t really changed. There’s big players out there that can produce volume commodity crops.

We’ve really got to look to what is the alternative? Where’s our niche play and where can we really drive value? If there’s a frustration I have, it’s probably the fact that just in the recent times, we see the influence of the primary sector pulling New Zealand’s economy around and making trade surplus. And yet, where is the science, technology, or the resource running?

Water is the key.

HR: We’re getting better, but trying to get water on the side to provide reliable supply should be easy, especially when it’s going to backstop a primary sector that can then grow and do things. And where’s market or trade and industry helping? I just think we don’t really get a strategy that lines all the things we can do up to really make the most of it. We leave it to the individual, and sometimes that becomes a very hard push.

BG: Yeah, the water piece is really interesting. You brought back some innovative ideas in 2000, but we’re still having the same conversations about how, where, and why when it comes to water storage and that sort of thing.

HR: What I brought back was efficiency and distribution uniformity and how do we make what we’ve got go as far as it possibly can? Because as we all know, it’s not cheap to pump water and put it through irrigators. So, you have to make sure you get the best bang for your buck from that.

So that was the efficiency side. And that, I think, goes without saying, we should be striving for that when it comes to water. But when it then comes back to at the moment, this mentality, I think, is almost how do we cut the pie up, the current pie up smaller and smaller and make all those things happen. Whereas we actually aren’t water short in New Zealand.

We’ve got a huge primary resource there. I’m not saying we waste it, but I think we shouldn’t be afraid to utilise it to the best extent. I just look across the ditch at Australia, Murray, Darling Basins somewhere like 115 % allocated. Canterbury and here in Hawke’s Bay, probably the max out at about 7% and 3% respectively. We’re not even getting close to pushing the boundaries of the available water, but absolutely, we have to do it as efficiently as we possibly can and be mindful of the environment.

I just think we shouldn’t be afraid to look at how do we grow that pie because that’s what we can then grow value and further productivity gains on.

The trickle-down effect.

BG: Yeah, and with the climate getting a bit more unpredictable, it’s a great opportunity to build resilience into communities as well, like people who are not part of food and fibre or maybe are supported through their work.

HR: Absolutely. If you look at the Opuha Dam when that was put in, it’s about the only study that’s being done. I think that showed on a MAF report, it was about $6.50 further value created from every dollar spent on farm, on water. And a lot of that went into the businesses, the support businesses in the town.

I think Temuka Transport before Opuha was 20 odd trucks, and now it’s 100 and something. Businesses support businesses, and hence the communities that support those businesses really do grow off the back of getting good water. So to my mind, it’s the enabler. We can talk about everything we like, but it’s the first stage in the process. We’ve got great soils and good climate. We just have to manage the water.

On Nuffield and leadership.

BG: You mentioned earlier, you’ve been part of the governance group for Rural Leaders. It’s obviously something you believe in, something you’d recommend to someone looking to get a good grounding in leadership.

HR: Look, absolutely. I mean, leadership does have to come from within, but the Nuffield Programme has developed so much from when I went through.

I remember going into my interview and there were nine primary sector leaders sitting in a semicircle, and I was sitting in the middle, and they each had a question to fire at me, and you went home.

Now, there’s still the interview process, but we’ve got the global tours that get the scholars together and look at different areas. There’s different focus tours around the world. We do a lot of training with getting the scholars ready to go on their journey. And it is a journey, and it’s a lifelong journey, and the network that you become part of and that you can link into.

It is a very big network that I think if it came together, it would be great. So absolutely I believe in it. And obviously there’s coupling it in now with some of the other programmes, like Kellogg and things, almost a progression, but it doesn’t have to be.

I think the opportunity of creating leaders or supporting leaders is more the thing. As I said, it’s time out of your life, it’s a commitment you have to make, and it’s an ongoing commitment. I’d like to think that part of the nature of the Nuffield Scholar is how to give back to the industry or the bigger picture. Certainly an opportunity not to be missed.

I know it’s difficult with a lot of people with young families and things like that. How do they make the time? And so you have to think carefully about that. But I really encourage partners to be involved because it is quite a liberating experience to go and see and visit and get your mind open to the opportunities and the scale.

You can come back quite a different thinking person. So Again, having partners involved to explore and understand that, I think, is quite critical to success.

BG: For more information on Rural Leaders, visit the pages for Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, the HortNZ Leadership Programme, the Engage Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme.

Jenni Vernon – Insights from a career built on taking the lead.

In this podcast, Jenni Vernon, 1994 Nuffield Scholar, Farmer, and former Chair of Environment Waikato, talks to Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor at Farmers Weekly, about how a lifetime of leadership in rural communities began with a strong connection to farming and a willingness to step forward.

Jenni also talks through her Nuffield research, the Nuffield experience, and on not underestimating the power of face-to-face communication in a sometimes-disconnected social media age.

Listen to this episode of Ideas that Grow, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

Episode Transcript

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I am Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson. This week on the show, we have a very special guest, Jenni Vernon, who is the very first woman to graduate with a Nuffield Scholarship. Kia ora, Jenni. How’s it going?

Jenni Vernon, Farmer, 1994 Nuffield Scholar:
Kia ora, Bryan. It’s great.

BG: You did the Nuffield Programme in 1994. What drew you to that? Do you have a background in farming? Did you grow up on one?

A strong connection to farming.

JV: My father was a rural bank manager, but my mother’s parents were farmers in the Ruahine Ranges at a little place called Rangawahia. My farming life really started following my grandfather around learning to ride ponies. In those years, 50% of his income was from wool. We used to do sheep dipping – plunging them in the sheep dip.

We used to have to pluck wool off dead ewes and off the barbed wire fences. That was my introduction to farming at a very early age. I always had a passion, really. Then I was led by a very good school friend to join the Young Farmers Organisation. And from there, just got involved with Young Farmers, became National President, and actually always worked in rural areas when I was a primary school teacher in Waipukarau.

Through Young armers I met my husband. We settled, or he lived on the Raglan Coast at Tāwhata on a small dairy farm. So, that was my real hands-on, ownership, full nine yards of being a farmer, and have done so ever since.

BG: What drew you to Rural Leaders and to apply for the Nuffield Scholarship?

From Young Farmers to a Nuffield Scholarship.

JV: I guess it was my experience through Young Farmers. I did 13 years there and went on to be National President. In 1985, I first did the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme.

Just through opportunities and leadership roles, I could see that to do something like a Nuffield, where it really does extend you, not only your personal development, education-wise, but your international perspective too.

We are at the bottom of the world, all our exports, everything is offshore. That was one of that bigger picture issues. I guess Nuffield for me was a bit of a circuit breaker in my career because prior to winning my scholarship I was actually a divisional director for the New Zealand National Party. I was working there for eight years managing; I always said, ‘…people, paper and money.’

Many thought I would head down the line of becoming a central MP, but I don’t think that was really me. This opportunity to have a go at applying for Nuffield and gaining further leadership roles and a bigger worldview – came up, and I was fortunate to be selected and travelled in 1994.

It definitely met my expectations of being extended personally. But I’ve had a lifetime now of connection and value and actually being able to mix and meet, not just internationally. Within New Zealand we have amazing rural leaders, and I feel very privileged that I have learned a lot from those people. Our paths would never have crossed if I hadn’t done that.

That led me into a whole lot of other leadership opportunities. It really was a diving board into my future leadership roles, passion for rural communities and agriculture in general.

BG: What did you focus your scholarship on?

Nuffield research still relevant 30 years later.

JV: My research looked at the deregulation of the Milk Marketing Board, which was big thing in the UK at the time, and also looking at cooperatives.

Just by chance, one of my fellow Nuffield friends from Zimbabwe, Helen Locke, was the first woman to be selected from Zimbabwe, that same year. She was studying the Dutch flower industry because she had a huge flower enterprise. They exported their flowers to Europe through the Dutch market. That really was probably, for me, the highlight of my Nuffield because that really opened my eyes to the consumer market and how fickle consumer markets can be for something a fragile product like flowers.

It also opened my eyes to the amount of research and development that the Dutch government was spending – because flowers and seeds are a big export market. That was probably the highlight.

Even today, that study, and it’s what, 31 years ago that I did my scholarship, that is still relevant today, the consumer market. One day they want red roses, and the next minute, they want some dried weed that you find in the back garden or in the paddock.

We were privileged to see the back of the Dutch flower market, it’s absolutely huge. If it’s not sold, it’s just thrown out. It’s the equivalent is something like eight football fields and all these flowers had been flown in. If they didn’t want them that day, they were gone.

That meant that back in the countries like Zimbabwe and quite a lot of South American countries, they didn’t get any income. That was it. You’d produce that flower or product, and it took how long to grow it and then export and everything else.

What was equally interesting, an so was the deregulation of the Milk Marketing Board, because I looked at a company which is well known nationwide or worldwide, Kerry, in Northern Ireland, an island, and the influence of how they diversified their portfolio out of milk and into other industries. Then, of course, we I’ve got cooperatives, Fonterra, for example. Actually, 31 years later, my topics haven’t actually become obsolete, and I still look back and think I was very privileged to have that understanding way back then.

BG: Now, obviously, you went through this leadership programme, and as you touched on, it led to decades of leadership roles since then. Can you walk me through some of the greatest hits?

A career in leadership.

JV: Some of the greatest hits. Well, I had the privilege of being on the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders) Board for six years. We went through that transition where we amalgamated the Kellogg and the Nuffield Programmes together.

I look at where the Trust is now with the other programmes. I was asked this question recently because I do a little bit of mentoring for women in leadership. One of the greatest hits was really to be actually Chairman of Environment Waikato, where we led the protection of Lake Taupo.

My greatest achievement was that my signature was on that paper protecting that lake forever. Now, it was a huge challenge. It was the first time farmers had to be consented. It was tough. There’s a lot of Māori, undeveloped land that will never be able to be developed to its economic potential to save the lake.

But that whole process and programme – to think that forever. I mean, we know that the lake’s water quality is going to deteriorate a little bit before it gets better, but it’s not long term. It’s going to have a better future than what it was probably looking like.

The most productive conversations are face-to-face.

BG: It seems we live in a bit of a sound bite world with social media and that thing. Being angry is commodified in some ways, which doesn’t help with actually thinking about the bigger picture as a nation.

JV: I guess I was privileged or otherwise that my term in local government, we didn’t have the influence of social media. I mean, yes, people could get angry with you, and yes, we were yelled at, but it was more face to face. It was in the local community hall or it was out in the field, standing on the ground, talking face to face.

There wasn’t this anonymous or down the line Facebook stuff. I mean, it was the beginning of, but certainly we didn’t have those anonymous Facebook conversations where nobody has any ownership. We owned it and we had to face up to it. I openly admit that there were times when it wasn’t very pleasant, but it was face to face.

It’s much harder to have a face to face conversation and be really nasty because there’s always a way through it. You can at least talk through the issues even if you want to raise your voice for the first ten minutes, generally, people calm down.

You’re right, the social media, I mean, I’m really glad, sounds very selfish, but I’m glad I’m not in local government or even central government now, where I think it’s sad that people find the need to hide behind the social media tool instead of actually upfronting. I mean, you can write submissions, that’s fine, but upfronting, honestly, within hall meetings and face-to-face. It’s a different world, a very different world. It’s one I struggle with at times.

BG: Now, you mentioned you still do some leadership mentoring? Do you have some work in that space? Yes. Are the attributes and skills and qualities of a good leader in the Food and Fibre sector, are they the same as they’ve always been?

Rural leadership pathways.

JV: They are, Bryan. In actual fact, one of the things that really concerns me is that we had a nice pathway into leadership roles in rural communities. When I first started, like young farmers or federated farmers, and then say your dairy board or apple and peer marketing board or whatever you wanted to do it. People seemed to want to embrace that.

Today, it seems harder for that pathway. I do have concern about people, how do you get into that leadership role? I do think sometimes that people have this view that once you’re a director or you’re on a board, that it’s easy, but it isn’t. It’s not fluffy stuff. It’s absolutely you’ve got a fiduciary duty. I think probably it’s harder now, because of time to run your business and the pressures and the responsibilities to take up some of those leadership roles. But certainly, if you do, it is exciting, and that’s where you can influence.

If you want change, it’s no good sitting in the back paddock and complaining. You’ve got to come to the front gate, and you’ve got to get out of your farm gate, and you’ve got to engage, and you’ve got to be part of a group, and that will lead you.

Some of the catchment groups, I look at them now. Some of those leaders, like Anna Nelson, for example, started off leading a big catchment group in, and now she’s Chairman of Silver Fern Farms.

It’s great to see that there is a pathway, but it is challenging. It’s still not easy for any generation to take it up because you have to, well, sometimes your business does suffer, but we do need to see people wanting to do that because we need a strong rural voice. The issues are not going to go away. They’re going to be more challenging, whether it’s environmental, whether it’s markets, or whether it’s political, dealing with your local councils or whatever. I mean, the issues are not going to go.

That’s the other thing that I look at and reflect is it’s harder for succession for family farms as well. That’s one of the other things that I have a bit of a concern about.

BG: Now, you mentioned that some of those tried and true pathways weren’t as strong as they used to be. But of course, there are the Rural Leaders Programme, obviously something you’d recommend to people.

Applying for a Nuffield.

JV: Totally, Bryan. It’s interesting. A lot of people go, Oh, I could never do that. I look at them and I go, Why not? The only thing stopping you is not applying. Because I’ve had questions like, how come you won a Nuffield Scholarship? Because, I mean, to be honest with you, Gordon and I only milked 180 cows on the Raglan Coast. We weren’t big-time farmers. But it was because I applied.

I applied myself in making sure that I was well prepared. I understood the dynamics of agriculture in New Zealand, the primary sector, but also internationally, and had a go. I also had mentors. I don’t mind saying it that John Kneebone was my… until he passed away, he was my mentor through my Nuffield, through being on the regional council for a lifetime.

If you can find somebody like that that helps you gain that confidence, because a lot of it is about confidence. That’s what Kellogg and Nuffield gives you – that confidence. People could say, I don’t have those qualities. Well, I could have looked in the mirror and said, well, neither did I. But actually, you’re surprised when you lift the lid, what’s underneath, and you can actually do it if you really want to.

I mean, I would never have guessed that my leadership pathway would have been what it has been over the last 50 years. Because if you looked at my school record, I was not a school prefect. I never won any prizes. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So, it’s that one opportunity that taps into that reserve. When people say to me, I couldn’t do what you do. I say, No, you just don’t want to – but you can.

Phil Weir on Nuffield’s global perspective, sheep and beef farming, and industry good.

In this podcast, Phil Weir, 2020 Nuffield Scholar, Farmer, Director B+LNZ and Associate Director AGMARDT, talks to Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor at Farmers Weekly, about the positive value industry good brings to farming.

Phil also talks through some of the challenges and opportunities for sheep and beef farming and how his Nuffield Scholarship and research has given him a valuable global perspective.

Listen to this episode of Ideas that Grow, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

Episode Transcript

You’ve joined Rural Leaders’ Ideas That Grow podcast. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant ideas that grow so our regions can flourish. Ideas that Grow is presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. With me on this week’s show is Phil Weir, 2020 Nuffield Scholar. G’day Phil, how’s it going?

Phil Weir, Farmer, 2020 Nuffield Scholar, Consultant, Farmer Director B+LNZ and Associate Director AGMARDT:
Hey, Bryan. How’s it going?

BG: Pretty good thanks. Now, you’re a farmer in the Waikato, and also sit on a board or two, don’t you?

PW: Yeah, I’m, first and foremost a farmer in Te Pahu in the Waikato. We’re sheep and beef farming here, and I’ve been doing that for about seven years. Had a range of other roles in an agribusiness prior to that, and then did a Nuffield Scholarship in 2020, which we’ll probably touch on because it was an interesting time to do that.

Since then, I’ve become a farmer elected director for Beef + Lamb New Zealand, and that also involves the New Zealand Meat Board and an Associate Trustee with AGMARDT. And then do a little bit of consulting for AgFirst Waikato. So, I keep myself busy enough and a nice diversity of things going on. So nothing never gets too boring, right? That’s great.

BG: That’s where I met you the first time was when you turned up for your first Nuffield weekend, wasn’t it?

Doing a Nuffield Scholarship during COVID.

PW: Yeah, I think so. I think we were getting media training at that point, Bryan, about how to talk to journalists and then that thing. So hopefully, some of that flashes back to me, I guess, today. But yeah, we were down in Wellington at that point preparing for… That would have been 2019, and we would have been preparing for what a Nuffield Scholarship was to look like.

Ultimately, the experience I had was a wonderful one, but probably one that was a little bit different than when we were sitting when I first met you and in 2019. But I think the whole Nuffield thing, I think this year is 75 years of Nuffield, and I was really lucky to get a scholarship. As I mentioned, did it during COVID, which meant that some of the travel arrangements didn’t happen right away, but absolutely, we did at some point get to go around the world and see some fantastic agribusinesses.

I think one of the cool things was reflecting prepping for this was we did the first Value Chain Programme around New Zealand, so Rural Leaders are now running a programme which looks at how good New Zealand agribusiness and agriculture and growing is.

And we were lucky to be the forced guinea pigs for that because we couldn’t go abroad. And so we got the chance to go and have a look at the best growers and best Agribusiness is in New Zealand, and I think it’s fantastic that programme now has been created probably out of the back of that.

I think it’s so valuable to go and look at what’s in your own country because we do so many things really well. That was one of the lucky things, I guess, about a COVID disruption. Every cloud has a silver lining.

BG: That programme’s going great guns these days. As the old ad used to say, ‘don’t leave town until you’ve seen the country’. Did you grow up in a farming family? Have you always been rurally focussed?

A call back to the farm.

We grew up in a small dairy farm, so I showed Ayrshire Cows as a teenager and a child. My wife brings up some of the photos with me leading cattle around the ring.

We grew up on a small dairy farm on the outskirts of Hamilton. In. It was fantastic. It was the classic family farming upbringing. We were probably fairly poor, but we didn’t want for anything, I guess. We were lucky, we were on the outskirts of town, so we got the best of both worlds. Then after high school, I probably tried to get as far away from agriculture as I could, to be honest.

I went and did a social… I started doing engineering and found that wasn’t quite for me. And then social science. And then went and did a master of marine management in Canada. So, for someone to get seasick, it was a bit of a novel thing to go do, but it was probably just a case of seeing the world, right?

Then I ended up living in Sweden with my wife in a range of places before we made it back to New Zealand via Australia and then worked at AgResearch. In a few business roles there. Then the opportunity to come farming on my wife’s family farm presented itself in 2017. We took that opportunity. So, it was full circle, I guess. Probably I tried pretty hard to get away from it, but kept nagging away to come back and have a crack. When the opportunity presented, we took it.

BG: I get that story a lot when I talk to your alumni in the Nuffield and Kellogg Programmes. A lot of them grow up in farming, head off and pursue other things, do things in other fields, see the world. Then, I don’t know, something nags at them, and they find themselves back where it all started.

I think it’s pretty hard to get past the fundamentals of rural life. Particularly, as you become a parent, you have plenty of space, and you have fresh air, and you don’t have some of the challenges associated with having children in urban environments. I think It’s not all roses going back from a corporate or agribusiness to a farming role. Farming is quite hard work, and there’s different challenges to it.

PW: I think that’s probably one of the big drivers. I think that’s what we reflect on that we really like about it, is that life It’s still an opportunity for both us and probably our children as well.

BG: On the sheep and beef farming side of things, it’s been a pretty tough few years, hasn’t it?

Sheep and beef farming now.

PW: It has. Yeah, there’s no doubting it. It’s been tough. Everyone experienced rapid inflation, so your costs escalated significantly. At the same point, we had the global commodities really dipped. So it was tough, particularly for sheep farmers.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of love from wool for a for a long time, and some of the high pricing that existed around COVID for sheep came off at a really unfortunate time. So it has been really hard. I think it’s great now there’s a sense that most people’s budgets are able to balance.

When I hang out with other farmers, I see more confidence. It’s partly just because you know you can make the box balance, and ultimately, you’re working for a profit or to be able to have some improvements. I think, really, there’s across the country, we got smacked with weather events amongst that as well, whether it be Gabriel or Northland weather events.

I think most of the North Island anyway had an event that costs significant amounts to farming businesses. It’s been a hard couple of years with interest rates and other things. But I think it’s on the right trajectory now. One’s going down and the prices are going up. So, I think make hay while the sun shines, Bryan.

BG: Yeah, I’ve been talking to AgriHQ analysts a bit over the past few weeks, and they’re surprised but happy with the way things are looking in terms of export demand and farm gate returns. They don’t see a downside coming soon. It looks like it’s going to be pretty good throughout the season. So that’s great stuff.

The outlook is positive.

PW: I think it’s nice to know that the strong prices are projected to continue. The world’s not without a fair dose of crazy right at the moment, but things could change. But I guess the fundamentals is a bit of a deficit of protein, and the protein that we produce. It’s nice to be in that position at the moment.

BG: Just getting back to your Nuffield experience. Obviously, you investigate an idea, I guess. Your report was on the changing world in farming and diversification and resilience and that sort of thing, wasn’t it?

PW: My Nuffield report, I guess when I entered it, I’d come from a research environment. I believe there’s a whole lot of value in farmers and growers investing collectively. I looked the industry good bodies and how they might best arrange themselves.

I had a particular focus on commodity levies bodies. But I guess probably what I found through that was that there’s a whole lot of industry good activity that goes on. And ultimately, New Zealand does a really good job in doing a lot of that.

We’ve got Beef + Lamb New Zealand, DairyNZ and other organisations, but we’ve got a whole range of other industry good bodies. And to be honest, it probably worked pretty well together. I think I probably looked at it from the angle and I proposed some change that could happen.

The value of industry good to farmers.

PW: I suppose the starting point was, and I guess it’s why I’ve become a beef and land director, is that I see massive value in individual farmers contributing a small amount of money in the form of a levy or a relatively small amount of money in the form of a levy to enable certain activities to happen that we otherwise couldn’t do.

The R&D work and the helping farmers to perform better in areas where you’ve got market values, the stuff that I’ve always been interested in. I don’t know whether it was ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ reading that when I was at university or something like that, but that whole pooling of resources to get a better outcome and stuff that the market won’t fund the area I was interested in.

I was lucky to look at the New Zealand system, but also to look at the United Kingdom and some European examples, Australia and the US as well. I guess probably what the outcome of it was is that when it’s all finished, I don’t think any system’s perfect, but our one does a pretty good job.

BG: That’s really good to hear because I guess in terms of the industry good organisations, you could argue we’ve been through one of the more turbulent times in recent memory, I guess, fuelled by the emissions pricing process, which ended up with a lot of people questioning how farming side of things went through it.

We seem to have evened out on the other side of that now. Of course, this government doesn’t have such a strong hand of regulation on the sector. It’s good to hear that through your insights globally, we look pretty good compared to others.

PW: Yeah, Bryan, I think the He Waka Eka Noa and water and those big media issues are often what people think of as the work that some of this industry good stuff does. But I think probably the thing we often forget is the amount of other work that goes on.

So whether it be the benchmarking work that can enable a farmer through Beef + Lamb’s economic service or a dairy base or some other tool to work out, well, hey, if I have this property and I’m running this system, then how are my peers going economically? What are they spending their money on? How does that work? Those data sets that have been prepared on behalf of industry for many years are really powerful and really important and can help us farm better.

I think there’s also areas where industry good bodies can ultimately collect some resources and they can make determinations around where some of our investment is spent from an R&D perspective. If we look at facial eczema in our area, if it rains today, then I’ll be happy. But in another level, I’ll be worrying a wee bit about facial eczema.

The fact that there’s an industry good body, in our case, doing work on that’s great. It’s not something I can afford. I can’t afford to do that work, but it’s stuff that very much underpins my business. I think we often forget or get caught up in those couple of big political critical areas where there’s a bit of conflict that clouds our overall perspective of all the good stuff that goes on.

BG: And of course, New Zealand being so unique in the world of farming, with its geography, climate farming systems, we’ve really got to do all that stuff here. We can’t just import IP or knowledge from other places because no one does it quite like we do.

PW: We’re so unique, right? There’s not many people produce sheep meat or kiwifruit, for that matter at any real scale. We’re the leaders in that, or us in Australia, and it depends maybe on what product you’re talking about.

Ultimately, we do have a unique primary production system based on grass, and so we have some unique challenges we need to deal with. I think it’s great that for the most part, growers have, whether it be onions, or potatoes, or tomatoes, or dairy beef, sheep, whatever, pulled little bits of funds together to help out the collective. It’s probably builds a problem like cooperatives and other collective models that have been really effective and efficient to helping New Zealand Ag, I think.

Despite your Nuffield experience being curtailed or hit, I guess, with the pandemic, how did you find the whole thing?

The Nuffield experience.

It was a life-changing experience, Bryan. To that point, we were on Tangalooma Island, which is off the Coast of Brisbane, like a tropical paradise, doing this scholar conference for Nuffield when the world fell apart during COVID. I think the group this year are coming to New Zealand. And so what happens there is that 100 scholars from each year converge on one location and discuss global agriculture. So we got the start of that, and then things changed.

But I guess probably what Nuffield provides as perspective, I think. Perspective as to where New Zealand’s agricultural system fits. So the basic thing of it is you get to travel and then you do a report. But through the travel piece, I suppose from a perspective, you get to see a range of different agricultural systems. Our group visited North Carolina, we visited Argentina, we visited Chile, we visited a range of places.

So, we saw agriculture in the United Kingdom. We saw agriculture being done on a range of scales, from massive feed lot systems, to avocados and lemons being growing on areas where there was basically no soil left, and it was all irrigation and social licence issues to do with that.

Then right down to small scale producers, 20,000 sheep, milk, dairy sheds, 100,000 hams hanging up in Iberian ham factories. So, you got the range of scale and perspective. And so I think that made me think about what is the role for New Zealand agriculture. I think the other one that it does is it provides a significant amount of confidence. And I think that’s across all leadership programmes.

Gaining confidence through leadership development.

I did Kellogg a number of years ago, and I think it provided the same thing. Both programmes empower the individual to think that they are credible contributors, that they can have an opinion, that their ideas are important, and that they can discuss and work through those with a range of different people in the industry.

So you get to interact with the people that are running the big businesses, whether it be Fonterra or Zespri, or others, and you get to hear their perspectives. I think that confidence is something that I’ve definitely taken from it. I think, yeah, confidence and perspective are probably the two . I think the other one that’s probably also stuck with me is, I remember Julian Raine talking to us, who’s been heavily involved with rural leadership in New Zealand.

He’s saying that a lot of it’s about how spending as much time as you can to really understand a problem. I guess part of it is it’s a programme, and I think Kellogg as well, they really encourage you to critically think about an issue to go a bit past the social media grab or the particular part of spin or headline grabbing that might be going on and actually think, what is this? Whose perspective is this from? What does it mean for me? What does it mean for the people I might represent?

For me, that was a really powerful learning experience. I’m very grateful for the Nuffield and for the sponsors that sit behind it.

BG: So, you’d recommend it to those thinking about doing it?

Investing in yourself.

You often speak with people that are looking at doing it and there’s no great time to do it. But the reality is you’ll probably have young kids, you’ll probably have… You will have business commitments. And what it makes you do is drop all of that and invest time in yourself and understanding agribusiness or agriculture globally. They used to stick you on a ship and send you off for six months, but now it’s more like five or six weeks. But regardless, it is a circuit America.

The programmes when you’re abroad are so busy, you can’t be running your own business at home. You struggle to deal with the family affairs, and so it provides a real disconnect. That is one of the strengths of it. I think that the best time to do it is now. It’s not going to get any easier to do it. I feel scholarship-wide, very young kids. I have a very supportive wife. I was very lucky in that sense. But I think it’s something you just need to do. The immersive learning component of it is something that’s really unique. I really encourage people to have a crack at it.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

You can read Phil’s Nuffield report here.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, the HortNZ Leadership Programme, the Engage Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Hamish Murray: Building stronger on-farm teams by getting out of the way.

In this podcast, Lisa Lunn, 2024 Kellogg Scholar, talks to Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor at Farmers Weekly about her Kellogg research into the use of genetic technologies in agriculture. Lisa’s research presents a balanced view that unpacks the challenges, and the opportunities genetic technologies offer the food and fibre sector.

Listen to this episode of Ideas that Grow, or click on one of the platform icons below to listen on your favourite player:

Episode Transcript

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’ve joined Rural Leaders’ Ideas That Grow podcast. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant ideas that grow so our regions can flourish. Ideas that Grow is presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. With me on this week’s show is Lisa Lunn, who is a recent Kellogg scholar.

Lisa Lunn, 2024 Kellogg Scholar and Category Manager for Crop Protection at Farmlands:
LL: Hi, Bryan. Thanks for having me.

BG: Where are you speaking from?

LL: Currently in beautiful Morrinsville in the Waikato, where I’m based.

Lisa’s Journey and Passion for the Food and Fibre Sector

BG: Nice. Now, you work for Farmlands, is that right?

LL: Yes, I do. I’m the Category Manager for Crop Protection at Farmlands.

BG: That sounds like a big job.

LL: Yes, essentially, it’s looking after anything related to agrochemical with an agronomy focus across the country. Working in really close with our team of talented TFOs, our agronomists, and our supply chain team as well.

BG: What knowledge and education do you need to get that job?

LL: I went through Lincoln University and got an Agricultural Science Degree, and I spent quite a few years in the sector working in various technical sales roles. I’ve had pretty good on-the-ground experience around the industry. Then this opportunity came up to get into the merchandising team. On my side of things, I bring a bit of technical on-the-ground knowledge, in an incredibly supportive environment with a lot of resources to help on the category side of things as well.

BG: Was the food and fibre sector always going to be your career of choice?

LL: Yes, I think so. I grew up on a small farm in the North Waikato. I think I always lean towards science and agriculture. Heading down to Lincoln to get my qualification was a natural step – Just so passionate about the food and fibre sector. It’s obviously everything starts and stops the food we grow. I’m proud to be involved with a sector that puts food on people’s tables around the world every day. It’s a pretty exciting industry to be part of.

Genetic technologies and the Kellogg research report

BG: We know the food and fibre sector in general, and New Zealand has a few challenges ahead of it. One of them we’re grappling with at the moment is whether to relax the rules around genetic technologies. And your Kellogg’s scholarship report looked directly at that, didn’t it?

LL: Yes, I was part of Cohort 51 that kicked off about a year ago. At the time, it was being talked about, but obviously a lot more has happened in the past year since then. The coalition government proposed some rules, a rethink of the rules, I suppose, that govern the genetic technology space. My report looked into if a change were to happen, what do we need to understand, as a country ,to make sure that any changes implemented are sustainable and the best thing for the country and our export markets.

Kellogg research process and key findings

BG: How do you go about getting the information and putting it together?

LL: Every Kellogg report generally involves a literature review. There’s a fair bit out there on this topic. Genetic technologies are very prevalent overseas, so there’s plenty of information there, and there’s quite a bit of information as well as to how it may impact our export markets.

The other part of that was semi-structured interviews. I spoke to about 16 key stakeholders from across the industry and also environmentalist groups as well, to make sure it was balanced. I had some interviews, and analysed the data as to the main trends that came out of it.

BG: Can you tell us a little bit about what those trends were?

LL: I spoke to a number of stakeholders representing a lot of sectors throughout the primary industries, and environmental groups, to make sure it was a fair and balanced discussion. In the groups I spoke to, no one was outright against a change, but there was plenty of those that were for it, and a portion were supportive but proceed with caution.

There were definite trends there in that a lot of people did support a change, and then probably the main group was ‘proceed with caution’. It was, ‘have a look at what other countries have done, make sure there’s a very good national conversation had so that everyone’s brought up to speed and understand what it means for us as New Zealanders, what it means for our export markets’. All of these things, that if we are to do it, we’ve got to do it right. We’ve got to take our lead from other countries that have done it and who’s been successful and who hasn’t.

Legislation and Global Considerations

LL: There was a group of individuals that I spoke to that were a bit more, ‘let’s find out a bit more information before we can make a decision, and potentially, are there other areas we should be focusing on first?’

A big thing that came out of it was that there are a lot of uses of genetic technologies. One of them, that’s been heavily spoken about, is the ability to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The group of respondents I spoke to were very clear on saying, ‘this is not a silver bullet’.

It has to be part of a holistic approach that means that we can use other technologies and other mechanisms to help reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. This isn’t just going to be a set and forget. We’ve got to look at the bigger picture and make sure we are using everything we can to make sure we’re hitting the targets we’ve set ourselves and doing the right thing to be sustainable farmers. It’s not something that’s just going to come in and solve all our problems overnight.

BG: The legislation we’re working to now was written in the mid ’90s, wasn’t it? Considering how far the science has moved, it’s definitely time to have another look at this.

LL: Yes, scientific consensus is that basically the technologies have moved faster than our legislation has. As you said, it was written a long time ago, the HSO Act, which governs the space. Initially, when it was written, genetic technologies was a lot more cisgenesis.

There was a lot more inter-species genetic transfer. Nowadays, it’s much more specific with CRISPR-Cas9, and those technologies. There’s also some cases where certain modifications that might happen in the market that’s been exported to, might not even be considered a genetic modification because it’s something that can occur in nature anyway. It’s about having clarity on the definitions and what our export markets would consider genetic modification or genetic gene-editing. And bringing that legislation up to date with the technology we have available to us these days.

BG: That’s the big thing. I think I often find in the correspondence I get on this, that some people think we can do this, so we should, whereas there’s a bigger discussion to have around what does that mean for other things outside of science in terms of society and the way we market ourselves to the world.

The Kellogg Experience and Future Outlook

BG: You mentioned trade agreements already. There are a lot of places who have different ideas what is acceptable or not. There’s a lot to get through, isn’t there?

LL: Absolutely. A lot of the competing nations in the agriculture space do use it, and in some areas it has given them an advantage. But we tend to trade on ‘clean green’ with the NZ Inc. image.

We need to be conscious of the fact that just because we can do it, it doesn’t mean we should. That’s an absolutely fair argument. There are a lot of very valid concerns out there. To name a few, it would be what impact is it going to have on our export market? There’s concerns around the corporate regulations around it.

There’s concerns about coexistence. Can an organic farmer still do what they want to do and be nearby to a farm that’s using GE products? I think it needs to be balanced. It needs to be fact-based.

I think you have valid concerns on both sides of the coin, and they need to be heard and understood and addressed. Some of the literature I read spoke to the fact that our export markets are probably more concerned with us moving in the right direction with our greenhouse gas emissions, water quality, animal husbandry, those things, even though we’re already very good.

But there were areas that, potentially, they’d like to see improvement, whereas in some markets, genetic technologies was less of a buying decision for them. But can we coexist? Can we still have the non-genetic technologies with farms operating alongside ones that choose to take up these technologies? The government has drafted a bill that’s already available for viewing and submissions.

It’s making sure that the discussions that are had our fact base, and it is an emotional topic. Hearing both sides of the coin and looking into what’s best for us as a country, as an agricultural export nation, and as New Zealand does as well, it goes beyond agriculture. Just understanding the technologies that may be available to us – what benefits are they going to bring?

BG: I understand the bill that’s been drafted is loosely based on the Australian system that they’ve got in train. Is that correct?

LL: Yes, it is.

BG: That there is some aligning with our close neighbours, is not a bad place to start, hopefully.

LL: Yes, absolutely. Just taking a lead on some of the nations that have done it and what their learnings have been and going more risk-based assessments as opposed to reviewing the individual technology itself, what’s the end product. They’re definitely taking a lead from Australia’s legislation.

A Transformative Leadership Experience

BG: Your report is out there. What was it like doing it? What was the Kellogg experience like for you?

LL: Fantastic, I absolutely loved it. I couldn’t recommend it more. I was very fortunate to be sponsored by Farmlands to do it. Farmlands are very generous with allowing me the time to head down and do the in-person courses. It was a lot of work putting the report together and doing the interviews, but the whole experience was absolutely incredible – The people you’re able to connect with both throughout the cohort.

The speakers that came to see us, conducting themselves under Chatham House rules meant they were just able to be so free and frank, and you could ask them questions you probably could never normally ask an industry leader or a CEO or a high-powered scientist or politician. You could be very open and transparent and learn whatever you needed to for your own personal development journey.

It was just absolutely unreal. The scope of people that were in the cohort, the knowledge they had, the questions they asked, just a wonderful cross-section of people from across the industry. The main thing we all had in common was we were passionate about the industry and the future of the sector.

BG: You mentioned it is personal development. What does the future look like for you?

LL: I touched on it before: Food and Fibre is my passion. I love being part of the sector, and I will always remain a part of the sector. I’m excited to be part of it here in New Zealand. It’s such a small industry. Everyone knows everyone. It’s a great thing. Everyone’s genuinely passionate to turn up to work every day.

I’ve been with Farmlands for about two and a half years now, so I’m really happy to get stuck in there and keep building on my role and working with a fantastic team I’m lucky to be a part of. Whatever I do, it’ll be involving the sector.

BG: For those out there who might be thinking about getting to work on something like the Kellogg programme, you’d recommend it?

LL: Absolutely. Rural leaders do a fantastic job of giving you all the resources you need, all the tools you need in your toolbox to become a better leader, to be more self-aware, to understand the skills you do have and the skills you could improve on.
The networks are astounding, and it gives you really good context for both internal
New Zealand-centric trends and aspects of the sector here, and also a really good handle on geopolitics and things that are happening overseas.

It helps you understand what trends may be emerging and how they could affect us here, as well as teaching us really good soft skills, like improving your critical thinking skills and time management and all sorts of things that come out of it.
Everything I gained from that is absolutely invaluable, and I’ll continue to use it in my career.

Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

You can read Lisa’s Kellogg Report ‘Understanding a future with genetic technologies in New Zealand agriculture’ here.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, the Engage Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Dave Nuku on Kaitiakitanga and adopting a long term view.

In this podcast, Dave Nuku, 2024 Kellogg Scholar, talks to Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor at Farmers Weekly, on his work with Ngamanawa Incorporation and about how adopting a philosophy of Kaitiakitanga can be in alignment with a strong and profitable business.

Listen to the podcast here.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.
You’ve joined Rural Leaders’ Ideas That Grow podcast. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant ideas that grow so our regions can flourish. Ideas that Grow is presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. This week, I’m talking to Dave Nuku. How’s it going?

Dave Nuku, 2024 Kellogg Scholar, Ngamanawa Incorporation.
DN: Hi, good Bryan and you?

BG: Going good, thank you. You’re one of the very recent Kellogg scholars. I understand your report has only just come out.

DN: I’ve had a fantastic experience with Kellogg. Just finished my report, so glad to have had that completed. Yeah, it’s good to be here with you today.

BG: Just tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?

Bringing a global perspective to New Zealand food and fibre.

DN: I’m from the Bay of Plenty, up here in Tauranga, and have some strong whakapapa connections back here. My family have been here for a long time. I’m currently working for Ngamanawa Incorporation, managing a block of Māori land of around 4,000 hectares in the lower Kaimai.

BG: Awesome. I was born in Tauranga, so I know the place pretty well. Has most of your career been in the food and fibre sector, or is that something relatively new to you?

DN: To be completely honest, it’s very new to me. I do not have a background in the food and fibre sector. I actually spent two decades overseas working through Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia. So I lived based in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore for several years in a completely different industry.

I was working for a multinational company over there running health clubs and resorts across Southeast Asia. So, it’s a big change from that perspective. I moved back home to Aotearoa a few years ago, just after COVID, and was fortunate enough to make a transition into the food and fibre sector with the Incorporation which our family have got long-standing connections with. It was a nice fit, but a very different industry – and all the differences that come with changing industries and countries.

BG: Yeah, that is quite a change, isn’t it? How did you find your time overseas? You’re obviously there a long time. environment.

DN: Absolutely loved being overseas, loved travel. My wife and I have got two kids as well, and so they were born overseas. So very much an international whanau. We did a lot of travel when the kids were young, and as they grew up. It was a constant part of our lives.

We were working in these different markets, so it was quite dynamic. Quite different to New Zealand. We were living in Malaysia and Singapore – so that’s closely connected to a lot of other countries, very easy to be mobile and get around. Businesses, languages, all of those things are very different, more nuanced, more complex than New Zealand in industries that we’re working at, but loved it. Absolutely loved it.

Having said all of that, it’s great to be home. I think Aotearoa, New Zealand is the best country on Earth and absolutely love living here, working here, and being home with my family.

BG: Tell me a little bit about the Incorporation you’re working for now.

Managing, leading, and stewardship.

DN: Yeah. So, Ngamanawa Incorporation has a large land block up in the lower Kaimai’s. Mainly the Incorporation has its roots in forestry. It’s around 2000 hectares of pine, radiata pine, and around 2000 hectares of native forest. In the native forest, we have a conservation team of five full-time Kaimahi or staff who are involved in our predator control efforts there.

We do everything from monitoring the waterways, the habitat for native species, whether it’s tuna/eels or kōkako, or kiwis. We have a lot of those really special native species up on the block. As well as forestry, we’re also involved in horticulture. We have a kiwifruit orchard with golden and green kiwi fruit in the Kaimai area, a little bit closer to Tauranga.

Then we also have some investments in other horticulture crops, strawberries on Matakana Island and some rocket apples in the Hawke’s Bay. So, quite a mix of different business interests across the Incorporation. It keeps you busy and it’s varied.

BG: Yeah, a lot of variation and diversity there. I guess there’s a lot of different farming techniques, business management, and you’ve got the native block as well, which is more of a conservation approach, I guess. A lot to keep on top of.

DN: I think it’s the variety and that diversity that makes it fascinating for me. I have a really strong international business background, but it’s nice to be doing something that is very, I suppose, organic and something working for an entity that we’ve got a long-standing connection to.

The block, the incorporation is made up of a number of different blocks of traditional Māori land, that has been in Māori ownership for hundreds of years. It’s nice to be taking that and really making sure that it’s productive in terms of our forestry, and then also in the indigenous forest space and the native bush, really looking at preserving the native species there.

We also have a lodge for our shareholders, so you can book the lodge and go up there and enjoy it with your family. It’s nice on a lake with lots of waterways in the middle of the bush.

It’s also about connecting people to land as well. Then the horticulture and the kiwifruit is really that’s a lot of the day-to-day operations. Long time between drinks in terms of the business model for forestry, but with Kiwifruit. They’ve got a more seasonal cash flow in business requirements and operations there.

BG: How are things tracking for you guys at the moment? Has it been a good year? Things looking pretty good?

DN: It’s been a fantastic year for kiwifruit in general across the Bay. It’s been something that the industry has really needed. We had a couple of rough years there with COVID, and there were a number of weather events.

Also, some of our growers down in the Hawke’s Bay area were really affected by cyclone Gabrielle. But overall, the industry has had a great season, a really strong crop. I think a record season, just under 200 million trays, which is around about a 25% increase on the previous highest year for Zespri overall, who sell our kiwifruit into market.

It’s been a record crop. Growers have really benefited from it. Last year’s growing conditions were excellent. Not only did we get good volume, but it also got really good fruit quality, which has held up well in the markets. We sell that through into Europe, China, and other places.

You’ve got to celebrate the wins, and we’ll take those because horticulture can be challenging. There’s always weather events, and you’re always on your toes, and no two seasons are the same. We’ll just take the win and then really focus on trying to do that again this season.

A background into how a Māori Land Incorporation works.

BG: Now, probably most of our listeners have a bit of an idea about how a Māori Incorporation functions and is structured. But could you just give us an overview of how that works?

DN: Absolutely. The Incorporation is governed by a committee of management. They function more or less like a board, I suppose, if you could think of it in that way, with some really small, subtle differences. But if you think of them as a board that are duly elected by the shareholders to represent the shareholder interests in the land block.

The Incorporation itself is an amalgamation of five different blocks in the lower Kaimai area that were all brought together just for the economies of scale that comes with a motivating all that land, which led to the 4,000 hectares that we currently have. Then what ends up happening is all of the owners in those individual land blocks more or less get shares in the Incorporation as opposed to a direct ownership in the land itself. That’s the governance structure and the ownership structure is more like a shareholding reporting into the committee of management.

The big difference between a Māori Land Incorporation versus a trust where the owners of the land still retained a slightly different ownership model. The Incorporation has been around for around 50 years and came together in the 1970s to amalgamate the land blocks to secure the land over the long term.

At that time, we were facing some challenges with the confiscation of land through the Public Works Act for the hydro scheme that’s currently up in the in the Kaimais. As I said, that was the origin story of the Incorporation. It’s come together as a result of that. We got into forestry and then have diversified over the years.

Kaitiakitanga – guardianship/stewardship. Adopting the long term view.

DN: So, generally speaking, Māori Land Incorporation, long term holders of assets in land, long term view, primary in nature, forestry, horticulture, looking to diversify. We have some other stocks and portfolio financial products. But everything we do isn’t really driven on a quarterly basis in terms of returns. It’s much more about where we want to be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years.

BG: That’s something that a lot of people are thinking about more and probably should think about more is having that longer term view of where you’re going. Because you’re right, that quarterly reporting makes you overegg the omelette in some ways.

You can drive production to meet targets and then have some issues to clean up afterwards. Whether a more measured approach with more long term targets seems to be a better way to take care of our land?

DN: I think so. That’s definitely our view on it. It’s more of the Kaitiakitanga view. Kaitiakitanga, meaning guardianship or stewardship. I’d describe it in that way – which was the subject of my report. What I wanted to do, having come back from extensive experience overseas in more international markets, where stewardship, guardianship, long term, intergenerational ownership, wasn’t really anything that I worked in overseas.

I worked for companies, many of whom were private equity owned. So, a different modus operandi, so to speak, a different timeframe, buying and selling companies, building them, selling them to the next person.

Coming back into this environment with a much more long term view, real care for land and nature, led me to study Kaitiakitanga, which is the subject of my Kellogg report. The concepts and all of the different influences, in fact, as they tie into Kaitiakitanga, I thought that would be a good way to educate myself and bring myself back up to speed so I can use that philosophy when managing the Incorporation assets and people.

Kellogg and Kaitiakitanga as a pathway to enduring prosperity.

BG: So, your report, as we said just out very recently, is called ‘Kaitiakitanga as a pathway to enduring prosperity’. I was interested that you kicked off by saying a lot of us have a simplistic view of what Kaitiakitanga is.

DN: Yeah, I think it’s most often thought about or used as a term in reference to guardianship or stewardship with regard to the natural environment. Whilst that is a part of Kaitiakitanga, that’s only a small component of Kaitiakitanga.

The broader application of Kaitiakitanga is the idea that one has a relationship not only with the environment, but also with your family members, also with everything within that environment. And with that, we call it Whanaungatanga or kinship. And with that kinship, our relationship, comes responsibilities. And the responsibilities that come from that, Whanaungatanga, or kinship, are responsibilities of care and Manaakitanga, looking after the environment, looking after others, looking after yourself, respecting the spiritual dimension that are imbued in all things.

We believe as Māori that things have a spirit, they have a Wairua, they have a Mana, they have a life force, or Mauri. Just acknowledging and respecting those things, particularly in the Taiao, but also one’s self. It’s a real all-encompassing philosophy in terms of how one can approach their life.

For me, in the way in which I think about it for the Incorporation. I see myself as a Kaitiaki of the assets that are within my responsibility, making sure that they’re not only produce good results, but they don’t do harm, whether it’s to the environment.

We look at things like forestry and our aspirations there to convert more of that into indigenous forests over time, perhaps retire parts of that. We also take the responsibility quite seriously and invest a lot into the conservation space, trapping possums, predators, to be able to restore some of the natural bird life on our block, to get the bird numbers up. To do that, you need to suppress the predators because they tend to kill all the chicks and the eggs and so on and so forth. That’s an example of Kaitiakitanga there.

Our team have rituals or practises that they use each day when they go out into the bush. They protect their Wairua or their Mauri. They’ll say special Karakia or incantations or prayers to protect themselves.

They’ll also ask for blessing and protection when they do the work in the bush. Then likewise, within the organisation itself, our philosophy is driven by Kaitiakitanga in terms of starting meetings with Karakia, with prayer, acknowledging people within the meeting or anyone who may have, for example, for us as Māori, in speaking back to that kinship and relationship connection.

We’ll also acknowledge those who may have passed on, their family connections and those within the region or the Mutu of Tauranga, the rohe of Tauranga will acknowledge them and do a Mihi to them and their family. So, all of these different practises that feed into Kaitiakitanga are all a part of the way you operate the way that you live and aspire to live.

Can you have alignment between Kaitiakitanga and propseprous business?

BG: As the title of your report suggests, Kaitiakitanga is not in opposition to having a prosperous and profitable business operation, is it? I mean, enduring prosperity, you can make a good living for all of your shareholders.

DN: Absolutely. That’s the aim. I suppose that was really what drew me to the subject they’re not opposing forces. One can be a good steward of the land, good steward of themselves and a guardian, and still prosper and have good economic returns, whether it’s for your shareholder, whether it’s for your Whanau or your business or whatever it is. Those are not things that are opposing their nature. I think that comes back to the long term view.

Then also considering in a broader sense what the return on an investment might be. An example of that would be we most often measure return on investment in dollar terms. Whilst that’s an important metric, it’s not the only metric. For example, we have businesses we’ve invested in, and they have a really good social return for our people.

It’s about unlocking the potential of some of our Māori land, by our people, for our people and creating employment opportunities. Like growing high-value horticulture crops. The case in point is the blueberry investment we’ve made. We know that that investment is not just about a hard and fast financial return. That is also about investing in capability and building skills in high value horticulture.

We can accept that for that type of investment that may carry a higher risk, so to speak. But we think the returns are going to be social in nature as well as ultimately a sustainable, profitable business. We’re prepared to take on a bit more risk because we can see that we measure success differently, so to speak. You have the right size that for your Incorporation in your business.

We’re not going to put all your eggs in that type of investment, but we do take a number of smaller investments that allow us to be more adventurous. Then as those businesses grow and perform, then we can scale them up knowing that they have a good return for our people, for our land, and then also from a financial or Putea perspective for our shareholders.

BG: Obviously, your report looks at this quite in-depth. You’ve looked at the literature, of course, and case studies. You’ve made some recommendations about how to incorporate more of a Kaitiakitanga mindset into a food and fibre of sector business. What are some of those?

Three recommendations to include Kaitiakitana principles into business.

DN: What came out of the report that I did were a series of recommendations that I think I did expect would be the outcome. They are, first and foremost for Māori entities where there’s an opportunity to include Kaitiakitana principles. Those are things like in the culture of the organisation, having Tūkanga, what we call Tūkanga or Māori protocols around the Karakia, Mihi, acknowledgement of people, those who have passed special occasions, opening meetings with Karakia, finishing meetings with Karakia, welcoming new guests into your office with Mihi and Whakatau. That would be one example of something that the Incorporation does.

Also, there are some tools out there that one can use to exercise the Kaitiakitanga in regards to waterways. There’s a really cool tool called the Mauri compass, which allows you to measure the habitat of certain wildlife, wild species. For example, the native silverbelly tuna (or eels) that we have here. We do a lot of work in that space. So, water quality, habitat cover, abundance of life within the waterways, et cetera. Creating benchmarks using the Mauri compass across those different areas. Then setting some goals based on that.

One of the other recommendations that came out of the report was the importance of really capturing Kaitiakitanga and incorporating it into what we call our SAIPO, our strategic investment priorities and objectives document that outlines how we invest in different things and incorporating Kaitiakitanga as a guiding principle. So, that one, we’re investing in things that we’re proud of, that we want to be in, that are going to be good for the Taiao and the environment as opposed to things that aren’t.

That we are also making investments for a certain portion of our asset base. We’re looking at that as a good financial return, but also a good social return as well. And so, we have the lens of Kaitiakitanga, that’s our perspective, and we look at different investments.

Those were the three recommendations, what you can do on a daily basis in your Incorporation to make it part of what you do. Two is, tools that you can use in the natural environment. Three is, how you can weave it into your governance structures or your investment structures so that you’re getting involved with things where you can exercise your Kaitiakitanga.

BG: I talk to a lot of people and do a lot of reading in my job running Farmers Weekly. It seems to me that there’s a lot in the Incorporation’s view of how to run things that everyone could learn whether they’re a family farm in Canterbury, or wherever they are.

It gives a story to someone about the weighing up all of the externalities and the balance sheets of what you’re doing in terms of sustainability, social responsibility, social licence to operate, profitability, that sort of thing. Is that something you think?

Kaitiakitanga - universal principles for a long term view.

DN: I think the principles are universal. I really do think they’re universal. We’re talking about them in a Māori context here, but these are principles that you find in many indigenous populations across the world. I think you’ll find them in non-indigenous populations as well.

Part of the research that I looked into, you’d see new concepts emerging, for example, in the US, around steward ownership models that are really very similar to Kaitiakitanga, where entities that are in the environmental space, in the education space, or the charitable space in the US. They have come up with certain corporate structures that allow them to separate the stewardship values as a separate and enduring part of the governance structure that oversees those companies.

Irrespective of who the owners might be, they’re still held accountable to those principles of stewardship, and that’s really aimed at enshrining those principles of guardianship over these different assets, more common in the environmental space. I suppose my point is that that’s an example of the same concept halfway across the world being implemented and enshrined in legislative corporate law. Because I think it’s a lot of people are wanting to do that.

I think there are a lot of entities out there that are saying, Hey, look, these are really good principles of long term view, not just measuring the bottom line from a dollar perspective, but also from a social perspective. I think that a more holistic view and long term view is better. I mean, anything, even from an investment perspective, if you invest in it for longer, it’s generally better. I think there’s a lot of principles that could apply to any business.

BG: I was reading just the other day about something that applies to the other end of the supply chain, NZ Story, which is part of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, did its most recent survey with Chinese consumers.

They found that after COVID, they were connecting more with their history and felt that New Zealanders, the fact that we embrace our indigenous culture and what we do more than some other colonised countries, was a point of difference for us. So, it’s an interesting thing to think about as well.

DN: I think we’ve got a great story. I think we’ve got the greatest country in the world. I really do. I think New Zealand is an incredible country. I think we do food and fibre really, really well. I hope there’s opportunities to lean into these indigenous narratives and concepts because they’re good for their environment, good for people.

That also sounds, as you’ve said, that they have a powerful resonance with other people abroad and other cultures. In typical New Zealand fashion, we’re probably too humble about it, quite modest. I think it’s okay to say, hey, look, these are things that we do really well. We do lean into it. That’s a part of our culture and our history, and we should be proud of.

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme.

BG:Now, how did you find the whole process of going through the Rural Leaders’ Kellogg Programme?

DN: I can absolutely say without any word of a lie or doubt that it was the best leadership programme that I’ve ever done. The most complete and thorough. The quality of the information from the presenters that you’re exposed to is really world-class.

We’ve got some of the best educators presenting content, a wide variety, too. People with military backgrounds, doctors, professors, politicians, farmers, horticulturalists, you name it. Te Ao Māori educators and specialists too. The broader array of leaders in all of these different fields and to be able to listen to them, to interact with them, to learn from them was just incredible.

It was a very, very special experience. Throughout that all, you’ve also got this report that you need to produce. You’re constantly taking in information from these presenters. You’re learning a lot from some of the best young minds, and probably I wouldn’t put myself in that, but more of a more mature vintage, shall we say myself. But they’re really, really great leaders in their own right who come in to do this course. You end up learning a lot from the people around you. That’s very motivating. Iron sharpens iron, so the whole experience has been exceptional.

If I was to say one thing to someone considering doing it, is to absolutely do it, go for it, but do not underestimate the amount of time it’s going to take you, and the focus and commitment that you’re going to need to get the most out of it. It’ll be worth it, but it’s a lot of great work.

You can read Dave’s Kellogg Report ‘Kaitiakitanga as a pathway to enduring prosperity’ here.

Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

Esther Donkersloot on leading research into cooler cows.

In this podcast, Esther Donkersloot, 2024 Kellogg Scholar, talks to Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor at Farmers Weekly, about her research with LIC on breeding heat tolerant cows.

Esther came to New Zealand to do her Masters’ thesis and never left. Good thing too. Having studied at the prestigious Wageningen University, she has steadily built a career looking into better genetic outcomes for our dairy herd – especially as the planet gets warmer.

Along with her research at LIC, Esther discusses her Kellogg report insights on genetics’ social licence to operate.

Listen to the podcast here.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I am Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson. This week, our special guest is Esther Donkersloot, who is a recent Kellogg Scholar and works with LIC. G’day Esther, how’s it going?

Esther Donkersloot, 2024 Kellogg Scholar, Scientist LIC.
ED: Yeah, really good thank you.

BG: I usually start these conversations by just getting a bit of life history, I guess. Now, you’ve come a long way to your life in New Zealand and your role at LIC.

The Netherlands’ loss, New Zealand’s gain.

ED: Yeah, this was an overseas experience for six months that turned out to be a bit of a life move to the other side of the world. So, my background is Dutch. I grew up in rural Netherlands, and I was always very interested in doing my master’s thesis somewhere else. Just by chance, I ended up in New Zealand with LIC, and have been here for 10 years now. So yeah, it’s been great.

BG: I understand you went to Wageningen, if I say that correctly.

ED: Yeah, it’s a tricky one. Wageningen University research centre. It was very close to home for me, probably about 20ks away from where I grew up. I I studied animal sciences there. Wageningen University is our main agricultural university in the Netherlands. It’s a highly regarded university, and it’s all around food, sustainability, and environment studies.

BG: Yeah, I used to work at Massey University, and they had a lot of partnerships with that university, and I always wanted to go and visit because it just sounded like an amazing place, that food valley environment.

ED: It’s an interesting place because it’s actually a very small town that the University is based in. So the town is the University, and it’s the combined effort of the University side as well as a big arm for research, which is a great environment to learn in. Definitely look back at it very fondly.

BG: So you came over here to do your master’s?

ED: To do my master’s thesis yeah. In our master’s, we had the opportunity to either do two thesis or to do a thesis inside an internship. I did two thesis. So, it took away the opportunity to learn outside of the University. I was still keen to get my main thesis done in a company somewhere else. By chance, my professor did his PhD with our head of research at LIC, Richard Spellman.

So, I ended up with the chance to do my (main) thesis over here in New Zealand with LIC, on gestation length. And then from there, I just enjoyed it so much that I rolled into a temporary contract, then a fixed-term contract. Now I’m well and truly settled in.

LIC research into heat stress in cattle.

BG: I understand your role here now is related to heat stress in cattle.

ED: Yes. I started my career with LIC in animal evaluation, and then had a little time in our international team. I got the opportunity to travel around a bit and learn a lot more about dairy around the world. I then came back to the research and development team to lead the Slick Heat Tolerant Breeding Programme, which I’ve been doing for the last six and a half years, alongside my colleagues. Nothing in research is ever an individual piece. It’s always a team effort.

BG: Could you just tell us a little bit about the work you do and why it’s important? I mean, we know things are warming up, so I guess it’s finding ways to get genetic markers for animals that are more tolerant of the warming world.

ED: Exactly. We found the slick gene. The slick is a dominant gene that we found in the Senepol breed in 2014. It is originally a beef breed from the Caribbean. Then we started the breeding programme to incorporate that into our New Zealand dairy animals.

Back then in 2014, the focus was very much around the potential of this gene for international, knowing that a lot of our dairy still comes out of tropical environments, and this is a huge opportunity for growth.

Then when we started to focus a lot more on environment and climate change, we changed the breeding objective to focus on what this gene could do for New Zealand. Because especially here in New Zealand, where animals are outside 24/7, we don’t have the opportunity to shelter them so much from heat stress as they would be in barn-based systems. So the opportunity of having a genetic solution was just amazing.

So, we started incorporating it by just traditional breeding into our crossbred animals in LIC with the hope of launching this as a commercial product in 2029.

BG: Obviously, a lot of this stuff goes above my head, but I do know that when you’re looking at these genes for certain traits, the first thing you’ve got to look at is, does it cancel out other traits you’re after as well? Like, I guess, milk production and mastitis tolerance, that sort of thing.

ED: Yes, absolutely. I’ve been leading the breeding side, where we’ve been trying to dilute this beef breed that we got the gene originally from, into our dairy animals. We’re trying to get the genetic merit and the genetic gain up to be producing milk and getting all those traits that we require for our New Zealand dairy systems.

Then alongside, my colleague has been looking at the effects of this specific gene, not just on heat tolerance, because we know that it does create a benefit for heat tolerance, but also what could this mean to the cold sensitivity of these animals?

We’ve been doing some research ourselves as well as a project in collaboration with Lincoln University, to understand, especially in calves, when they’re born in winter here in New Zealand or very early spring, what this gene would mean to them. Because we know it did create a shorter hair coat.

We found there’s been no negative consequences to this gene, and we’re hoping to publish some of this data very early in 2025. It’s very important for us that we make sure that before we commercialise, especially knowing that we’re on a seasonal system here, once it’s out there, you can’t control what animals are being born. So, we need to totally understand everything we need to know about this gene and making sure there’s no negative consequences.

BG: Well, we look forward to reading some of your research findings and then seeing some of this technology hit the market.

ED: Yeah, it’s a super exciting project. Having being part of it now for this last six and a half years, we just see these animals produce more and more. It’s so exciting to follow them from the sideline and being able to do research on them in different locations in New Zealand.

Kellogg research into genetics’ social licence to operate.

BG: If that didn’t sound like a lot of work, you were part of the first cohort of Kellogg Scholars this year.

ED: Yeah. I was part of Cohort 51, and lucky enough to be there on an LIC Scholarship.

BG: Oh, nice. Tell us a little bit about what you focused your scholarship studies on.

ED: Yeah, that’s an interesting one. Being a scientist, doing social science in leadership is quite different to my normal day-to-day activities. But what I was interested in is this aspect of this term ‘social licence to operate’ and how that applied to my area of expertise, which is genetics.

I was keen to understand how people were, first of all, to learn from other technologies. Other examples of things out there that we can learn from how people discovered and built this social licence to operate. Then understanding how people felt about genetics and what that social licence looked like. That was the main focus of my Kellogg Individual Research Project.

BG: I’m a journalist, and that seems very newsworthy because in New Zealand we’re right in the middle of having a rethink of our gene editing laws. One of the big issues that we’re all grappling with is, even though you can do it, should you? That comes down to social licence. It comes down to the marketing of your food story and all that thing, doesn’t it?

ED: Yeah. Part of why I was really interested doing this is that I felt quite often that social licence or that public perspective always came in during the commercialisation stage, and not that much during the research stage. But especially when you’re in a cooperative like LIC, everything we do is returning value to our farmers. If it doesn’t tick that social licence box, we need to pivot.

For me, it was how do we bring that conversation all the way through our research phases, from brainstorming to commercialisation? And then how do we also keep a finger on the pulse? How do we understand that the market is reacting to when we have a product in market? Because as you know, things change.

We’re living in a world where everything is changing faster than ever. So we can’t just put a product out there and just assume everything is all right. So, how do we do that? And who do we involve? Who are our stakeholders? And how do we carry that as an industry? Big questions.

BG: Oh, big questions. Did you manage to come up with some insight about how the licence was going for genetic technology?

The Kellogg research insights.

ED: It was a big question. I only scraped the surface. But one of the things that, first of all, really captured me, all the stakeholders I talked to were very passionate about genetics. Everybody understands the value of it, and it’s something that’s a cumulative that we can create and maintain. But not everybody felt like they were part of the conversation. So there’s definitely work to do there.

Then it brought up a lot of conversations around New Zealand Inc. How can we collectively take responsibility of all the aspects of our dairy towards not just our direct community here in New Zealand, but also our consumers overseas? That was really fascinating. Also, one of the other things that came up was the term ‘trust’. How do we build trust? But also what level of transparency do we get down to?

As I said, I’m Dutch. I like to think I’m a very open and almost, oversharing person. For me, a big learning curve was that sometimes by creating almost too much transparency, you actually raise more questions, or you highlight probably the negatives a bit too much. How do you balance that?

By building that trust, having transparency, but not oversharing where you just create confusion. There was some really interesting learnings in there.

BG: I was going to ask that because you’re uniquely placed to give insight into things. The Netherlands is one of the big food tech, animal production powerhouses of the world. I guess the general population on the street probably has a pretty fair idea about what’s going on over there. I wondered how it differed from New Zealand.

ED: Probably not at all. I would think that there’s a closer connection here to our farming communities just because a lot more people live rural. There’s a real urban-rural divide in the Netherlands, where a lot of people probably wouldn’t really understand where their food is coming from.

Then for me as well, I was very interested in that stakeholder piece around consumer versus customer, versus your direct community. But because we’re an export country here in New Zealand, what does that look like and how do we do that? In the Netherlands, it’s similar. Here, people feel very connected to farmers. They see it on their way to school, they see it on their way to work. Probably not so much in the Netherlands.

Food security and farming systems – Netherlands vs New Zealand.

BG: That’s interesting. I guess another thing to think about is that because we export so much of our food, we kind of don’t have the same food security concerns that places like the Netherlands do, and who have relatively recent major issues in terms of keeping everyone fed.

ED: Absolutely. Animal health as well, and diseases, things like that. This is a very different ball game. That’s what makes it so fascinating to be here in New Zealand. Also just the seasonal pasture system, I think it’s absolutely fantastic what we’re doing here and how we convert our basics into profit.

But at the same time, it brings its own challenges. As I mentioned before, when we have a product like genetics going out and it’s being used in spring, next year, we get millions of calves, and it could be thousands of the same sire line, for example.

That brings very different complex systems with it than we have in Netherlands where you have barn-based systems and you get a calf every second or third day. It’s just absolutely fascinating to compare the systems and understand the strengths and weaknesses.

Connecting with the Kellogg network.

BG: How did you find the Kellogg programme on the whole? It’s quite a big deal. There’s a bit of work involved. Of course, you’ve got cohort of people doing it with you.

ED: You walk in that room the first day and you get really bad imposter syndrome. Being a scientist, I’m like, wow, there’s all these leaders here in the room, what am I doing here? But I think the beauty of Kellogg is not just the content and the amazing speakers you get, but it is that cohort.

Just being able to banter with others, understand what they do, what drives them, understand their farming systems or their organisations. Especially for somebody like me that didn’t grow up in this industry. It was really important to set those networks and understand a bit more about the drivers of other people on the course.

BG: You’re here in Aotearoa to stay, you reckon?

ED: Yeah, I am a permanent resident. I’m living just outside of Te Awamutu rurally, so absolutely here to stay.

BG: It’s been great chatting to you, Esther. All the best for the rest of your work there at LIC.

Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

Jack Cocks – How resilient farmers thrive in the face of adversity.

In this podcast Jack Cocks, 2021 Kellogg Scholar talks to Bryan Gibson Managing Editor Farmers Weekly, about his research into resilience in the face of adversity.

Jack faced his own adversity in the form of a brain aneurysm that sparked a recovery journey spanning 15 surgeries over six years.

Jack works on Mt. Nicholas Station with his family. He shares the three things all resilient and thriving farmers have in common here.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I am Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson. This week our special guest is Jack Cocks from Mount Nicholas Station. G’day Jack. How’s it going?

Jack Cocks, Mt. Nicholas Station.
G’day Bryan. I’m good, thanks. How are you?

BG: Yeah, good. Now, you were part of the Kellogg Programme two or three years ago, and you focused on farmer resilience, which is obviously a very important issue, but you’ve got a special reason for doing that, don’t you?

Well qualified to share insights on resilience.

JC: Yeah, I stumbled into it. It wasn’t something I really intended to be studying or to get involved in. Probably something I probably couldn’t define 20 years ago, what resilience was. But my wife and I have been farming here for about 16 years. About 11 years ago, I had a brain aneurysm caused by a rare form of inflammation between some blood vessels in my brain. Almost died, expected to die, had a number of complications, got a lot of time in surgery, in hospital, and a lot of surgeries over the next six years.

Then out of that experience, I got told I was a resilient character for bouncing back from adversity, and I didn’t really think I was that particularly resilient, and I didn’t think I knew what I was talking about – talking about resilience to a group. I felt everybody faces adversity.

Kate, my wife, and I were talking about this one morning over breakfast, and she said, why don’t you do the Kellogg Programme and study resilience? So, that’s how I got involved in Kellogg and how I ended up studying resilience.

BG: Tell us a little bit about what you found through your studies and how it made you understand your journey better or relate to it, or see any difference there, I guess.

Thriving in the face of adversity.

JC: I wanted to figure out how resilient farmers thrive in the face of adversity, which I use as a definition of resilience, that is, their ability to thrive in the face of adversity. So, to answer that question, I found five farmers throughout the South Island who had all faced major adversity, and they’d thrived in the face of that.

I sat down with each of for two or three hours, and we talked about their life pre-adversity, what it was they’d gone through, and then how they felt they’d been resilient. Out of that, there were some very strong similarities across those five farmers that all unknowingly, and independent of each other, had done the same things to be resilient and get through adversity. It all came together quite nicely in a simple little model.

Purpose, why, and connection.

BG: Because I guess often, we think about resilience as a moral quality, if you know what I mean, like courage or something like that. But it seems what you’re saying is resilience is something that anyone can do if they have the tools or know the process.

JC: Yeah, very much so. It’s something you can learn. Some people will be naturally more resilient than others and able to handle adversity. But it is something you can learn. I guess the model that came out of my Kellogg project was trying to develop some tools that people could utilise in their own lives to be more resilient.

So, when they faced the next challenge, and we all face challenges. They’re able to better handle that and get through that adversity.

BG: What is the model?

JC: So, there was three things that these five farmers all did. They all had very strong purpose, so they understood why they were doing what they were doing, and they were all very good at keeping connected. So, they surrounded themselves with people who could help them through adversity, and they all understood their wellbeing, or what they needed in their lives to be well and to be happy.

It came together visually in the form of a triangle with purpose at the top. That’s the ‘why’, connection being the glue in the middle of the triangle. That’s the ‘who’. And then wellbeing as the ‘what’ at the base of the triangle. That’s what came out of my Kellogg project. I’ve since done a couple of papers with a friend of mine, Joanne (Jo) Stevenson, a farmer in North Canterbury, and Hamish Gow at Lincoln University, which we’ve talked about and published in different journals.

Telling the resilience story.

BG: Tell me a little bit about that process. Are you from an academic background

JC: No, not at all. I’m probably quite academic for a farmer. I’ve got a postgraduate degree, but the first one was for the Institute of Primary Industry Management that Jo and I did. And then the second paper was for the International Farm Management Congress, which Jo, Hamish and I put together, and I presented that in Canada.

I guess where that came from, and this was Jo’s idea, Bryan, but one of the things that really came through when I’ve done probably 30 talks over the last five or six years about my health story, and resilience and the outcomes of my Kellogg research.

One of the things that came through to me was that people really resonate with the stories, the individual stories, my story of what I’d gone through from a health perspective and these five farmers I studied in the Kellogg Project.

So, Jo saw this, she’s got a background in resilience and found that there’s actually a lot of literature that suggests we can build our own resilience through understanding stories, through the stories we build ourselves on how we’ve navigated adversity, and hearing stories about how other people have navigated adversity.

So, if I hear a story about how you’ve gotten through a financial challenge or a family challenge, or whatever, and been really resilient, that might in-turn develop my own resilience and say, Oh, actually, I know Bryan got through that challenge by doing this. He’s come through the other side really well, so that suggests I can do the same. That most recent paper that I presented in Canada was based around that.

Resilience in a time of rapid change.

BG: Having presented internationally on this, are places like Canada, other places doing this work as well? Do they have the same take on it?

JC: I think it resonated certainly with the audience in Canada. It really did. I think resilience is something that increasingly is needed by everybody in the world. I think something that resonates with people, is that we all face adversity and we all need to be resilient. It’s not just me, in my family that’s had a health challenge. Everybody goes through challenges.

BG: Sometimes you hear people say a focus on resilience means you’re adapting people to deal with broken systems, and perhaps we should deal with the broken systems. But that’s simplistic as well, I guess. There’s always going to be obstacles, challenges in front of everyone, and it’s having the tools in the toolbox to be able to deal with them. Is that something you’d agree with?

JC: Yeah, I think so. There’s a lot of interpretations of resilience. Sometimes it’s being tough. Traditionally, it’s been bouncing back from adversity. But people that work in the resilience field now think because adversity is so common and constant, we’ve had COVID, climate change, a cost-of-living crisis. We actually need to be able to thrive in the face of adversity rather than just bounce back. So, that’s the current thinking from people that are working in the field of resilience.

Resilience is our ability to thrive in the face of adversity. But it’s a word that gets used a fair bit these days, and that’s possibly misinterpreted and mis-defined.

BG: I guess that’s something important as well. You mentioned we have seen resilience as returning to whatever we thought normal was or what was beforehand as quickly as possible. But to have an enduring effect, it’s actually about doing the right things and coming out stronger and more able to cope. And that might take longer and might look different for different people, I guess.

JC: Yes. I guess these three strategies that I came out of this Kellogg research, the idea was that they’re applicable to anyone, be it a farmer, be it a health challenge, or be it a financial challenge, you can apply these. It’s important to be resilient, to have a strong sense of purpose, a strong reason why your dairy farming in the Manawatu makes it easy for you to recover from a flood, or sheep farming in the Wairarapa makes it easier for you to get through a dry spell if you’ve got that strong reason why you’re farming where you are. And then connection and wellbeing are really important as well. But those three strategies, I think, are applicable to all farmers and everybody.

A sense of purpose.

BG: Now you’ve done all this work, the Kellogg Scholar Report, other papers written, obviously presented around the place. How do you feel now when looking back before you did all this through your health issues? Did you do what you now put on the tin, so to speak?

JC: Did I achieve what I wanted to by doing Kellogg?

BG: No, it was more talking about how you got through your challenge. Did you do it in a way that you would now prescribe as the way to do it?

JC: Oh, yes. Yeah, I see what you mean. I guess I’d been okay or all right. I’d been connected with other people. I had a huge network of support, my family and friends that helped me through that health challenge. I was probably reasonably good at understanding my wellbeing and figured out what I needed to do to keep happy and well.

People have asked, were you depressed or did you suffer from depression? And I got pretty annoyed at times with being in hospital, but I don’t think I did suffer depression. Those two things I was probably not too bad at, Bryan. The purpose was something that came out of the Kellogg research. These five farmers all had that strong sense of purpose, and that’s something I’ve tried to put in place in my life since. And that’s been a really valuable thing.

Kellogg and life on Mt. Nicholas Station.

BG: Those five farmers, what were their challenges? Just to put some context around how this resilience method can be applied. What had they gone through?

JC: So, one was a health challenge, one was climatic, one was financial, one was family, and then one was grief, personal loss. So, the five typical most common forms of adversity that farmers face, not all forms of adversity, but five of the more common forms. These farmers were from Southland to Marlborough and scattered in between. So, a pretty good spread across different farming systems.

BG: Different types of people, too, different age ranges and that sort of thing?

JC: Yeah, probably 30 years difference in age from the youngest to the oldest.

BG: I guess it just goes to show that if you have the building blocks there about how to navigate these things, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, you can apply them to your own situation.

JC: Yes, absolutely.

BG: The Kellogg Programme itself, it seems like a lot has come out of it for you. What was that like for you, doing the work?

JC: It was a fantastic programme. It’s very well structured, it’s well organised and facilitated. Great speakers, great content, a peer group that you go through with. So, for me, it was probably… It sounds a bit flippant Bryan, but it was probably a life-changing experience for me because I’d been pretty well in my mid-30s, and then almost died.

I’d been on a walking frame and had to regain my speech and learned to walk again multiple times to get to the level where I was able to contribute and take part in that programme. But it’s a great programme. I can’t really say enough good things about it.

BG: How are things for you now, Mount Nicholas? Obviously, a lot of work involved there. Things going okay?

JC: Yeah, and I think it’s pretty good. It’s been a pretty good climatic season for us over the last 12 months. It’s quite challenging financially as it is for all farmers in the country or all businesses, all people in New Zealand at the moment. But yeah, climatically, it’s been a good season for us.

BG: And if prices go down a bit further or the snow comes in or whatever the challenges are, you’ve got the magic triangle to fall back on, I guess.

JC: Yeah, that does help. It certainly does help. I wouldn’t advise this at all, Brian, to anyone, but you’re having a life, a near-death experience certainly puts things in perspective. When things are a bit turning a bit pear-shaped, you’ve still got your life and your health and your family. At the end of the day, you’re going to have challenges. That’s what I’ve really learned over the last 10 or 11 years.

Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

Key food security programme delivered in US-NZ partnership.

‘Mission New Zealand – Navigating Geopolitical Tensions and Climate Change as an Agri-based Economy’, was a week-long programme delivered by Rural Leaders in Christchurch.

Facilitated by Dr Scott Champion, the programme was designed to give a group of 25 visiting Gilman Scholarship alumni a deep dive into global food security.

Participants gained insights into the policies, technologies, and adaptation measures that aim to secure the New Zealand agricultural sector and reduce environmental impacts.

The programme was an opportunity to explore New Zealand’s innovation and initiatives towards food security. It included modules on global food security, trade, food and fibre value chains, a NZ Government perspective on food security, a Te Ao Māori perspective, food safety, precision agriculture, as well as presentations from supply chain, biosecurity, regulatory, and sustainability leaders.

For Rural Leaders the programme represented the strengthening of an important relationship between both enterprises, and more broadly, between the US and NZ.

Lisa Rogers, Rural Leaders’ CEO said, “We were pleased to be asked to host and deliver this Global Food Security focussed programme for the Benjamin A Gillman Scholarship from the US.

The week provided the opportunity to showcase NZ Food and Fibre’s innovative and entrepreneurial approach to food production.

With presenters to the group including politicians, officials and innovative producers, the group of scholars had an immersive week within our Food and Fibre sector.

The opportunity to hear external view points about our sector and its food production systems was as invaluable as it was refreshing.”

For the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program and the US Department of State, ‘Mission New Zealand’ has been a valuable cross-pollination of ideas and knowledge sharing, for food security and for the platform it has provided for discussing some of the challenges both countries face.

Gilman Scholarship Alum Darrin Vander Plas – REX podcast.

One attending Gilman Scholarship alum, Darrin Vander Plas (pictured above), took time to chat to Dominic George and REX online about what he and his colleagues learned on their trip to NZ, his role with the US Department of Agriculture Farm Loan Program in Maui and his time helping farmers in The Gambia and Uganda.

Darrin Vander Plas, from the US Department of Agriculture, is one of these people who has ventured over and he explains further what the goal of the trip is as well as some of the highlights so far.

Vander Plas, who manages the USDA Farm Loan Program in Maui County, Hawaii, highlights the resilience of Kiwi farmers despite the absence of government subsidies.

Additionally, he discusses his experiences in The Gambia and Uganda, where he supported local farmers through various agricultural initiatives and his experiences during last year’s wildfires in Hawaii.

Lisa Rogers – Leadership Programmes and Pathways.

If we believe the Food and Fibre sector has a Leadership challenge versus a Productivity challenge, then developing our sector’s leadership capability needs to be a priority.

In this podcast, Lisa Rogers, CEO, Rural Leaders talks to Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor, Farmers Weekly about the recently released report ‘A Path to Realising Leadership Potential in Aotearoa NZ’s Food and Fibre Sector’, along with its leadership development framework, and the leadership programmes serving as key tools for building more and ever greater leaders for our country.

Listen to Lisa’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I am Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson, and with me today is Lisa Rogers, Chief Executive of Rural Leaders. G’day Lisa, how’s it going?

Lisa Rogers, CEO, Rural Leaders
Great. Thanks, Bryan. It’s good to be here.

BG: Now, as we know, Rural Leaders is in the business of creating people who are primed to go into leadership roles. But recently, you’ve been involved in a big report on the state of leadership pathways in New Zealand is and how they might be improved. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

A new report that aims to help solve an old challenge.

LR: Yeah, sure. We’ve recently released a significant report in developing leaders in the Sector. It’s called a Path to Realising Leadership Potential in Aotearoa, New Zealand’s Food and Fibre Sector. We’re very proud of this piece of work that the authorship team has taken almost two years to bring together.

It was originally commissioned and supported by Food and Fibre CoVE – the Centre of Vocational Excellence. They commissioned Rural Leaders to conduct research into the state of leadership development in the sector and to also create a principles-based model towards leadership development. This report is now out. The report covers three main areas: Why we lead, how we lead, and how we are going to continue to grow leadership.

The idea is for this work to become a user guide, for want of a better word. And there is a framework that sits around it as well for people to be able to identify where they are on their leadership journey and to then look at what programmes and what a pathway might look like for their development, depending on where they are in their journey and their age and stage.

So, yeah, it’s a great piece of work.

BG: Obviously, when we think about leadership in the Food and Fibre sector, there are the likes of the Kellogg and Nuffield Programmes. There are other programmes out there, AgriWomen’s Development Trust, and there are various associate board member roles that various processes play. Do we have the infrastructure in place to succeed in building new leaders?

Leadership development programmes and pathways.

LR: I think there’s a great range of exemplars and programmes that are out there. The structure is the thing that’s been missing up until now. A lot of organisations and people have considered this over the years, and this is a foundational piece of work to be able to start creating an ecosystem system that we’re going to have.

It’s not going to necessarily be all about New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust. We want to be part of this, along with everyone else. So, what we’re wanting to do is get a great range of programmes that are there from early days or vocational type programmes. So, from first steps on their leadership development right through operations teams and into that strategic level of leadership as well, which traditionally, Kellogg and the Nuffield Scholarship have been in that later stage.

But we’re also developing and delivering new programmes as well. We’re very proud to be also involved in the Horticulture New Zealand Leadership Programme, which is in that operational space, and looking now at team leadership programme as well. Rural Leaders has got a lot of great programmes to be as exemplars of this leadership journey, but we also want to bring other organisations in to have their programmes there for delivery as well. They’ll obviously still belong to those organisations, but we want everyone to play in this space.

Horticulture New Zealand Leadership Programme, the Value Chain Programme and Engage.

BG: You mentioned the Horticulture New Zealand Leadership Programme, and of course, we know about Kellogg and Nuffield. What are some of the other programmes that Rural Leaders specifically has?

LR: Traditionally, we’re about leadership, and we still absolutely are. That’s our core purpose. But we are also increasingly moving into the capability space now and development of those leaders in the sector. We have the Value Chain Innovation Programme, which runs every year. It’s seven days going through to our iconic four big value chains.

It’s an amazing opportunity to do deep dives into the sheep and beef, the dairy, horticulture, and kiwi fruit industries, and understanding why they are such an important part of our sector, along with all the moving parts that go with that. There are always new changes, and that’s an incredible week with Professor Hamish Gow and Phil Morrison from down in Southland.

We also run a new programme called Engage, which is really starting to pick up a head of steam now. It started off as a joint venture with Lincoln University and Ministry for the Environment. It’s for people coming into this sector who have got great transferable skills but weren’t necessarily brought up in a farming or food and fibre environment. So, they have a three-day immersive programme with us, and we’re finding that that is becoming quite a go-to programme for us as well.

Rural Leaders is starting to build a real stable of programmes and become known as a leader development organisation more than anything else, which is so exciting.

BG: Obviously, the programmes that are out there and the support for people is a key aspect. But leadership is built in the workplace, isn’t it? In the relationships you have and the opportunities you’re given, maybe even when you’re just starting out in your career. We’ve mentioned the report. Are there other tools in the toolbox that can help workplace places develop their staff?

Rural Leaders provides tools for leadership development.

LR: Absolutely. So, the report is all about identifying that pathway. There’s a capability framework there. So, we want people to come in and have a look at this in a way that is accessible. So very shortly, we’re building a microsite, for want of a better word, so it’ll be mobile friendly.

It’s a way of having a look at where they are now on their journey. So, we assess, am I at the beginning of my leadership development? Have I been doing this for a while? Am I looking for a change? If I’ve been doing something for a while? And then actually ask a few more questions around that. And then this framework will give them some suggestions on programmes that they can be involved in now, some stuff they might like to look at in another year or two’s time, and then further out from there as well.

Again, it’s an independent assessment, so we’re not necessarily pushing them into all our programmes, although there’s some great opportunities there. But it might be that other organisations have got some great programmes around for them as well. And we certainly include the like of Muka Tangata as well and some of the WDC programmes that are out there – the Workforce Development Councils.

So, we’re also looking at how these can be micro-credentialed, so they give true value for the people who are undertaking them as well. We’re also looking at developing a high-performing teams programme. We see that as a real gap in the availability about being able to create an environment for thriving and high-performing teams.

BG: Identifying the people who have leadership potential and working with them is one thing. I guess Food and Fibre has often struggled to attract some of the talent to the sector from schools and that sort of thing; traditionally pushing people towards medicine, and law. How do we shift the dial there? Because the Food and Fibre sector is so important to New Zealand. It’s so big, in a sense. It really needs to have the best and brightest there, doesn’t it?

With good leadership, people stay.

LR: It sure does. When you think that there’s almost 360,000 people working in this sector now, and it’s worth over $55 billion a year in export income, it’s an incredibly important part of New Zealand’s economy. And up until now, one of the statistics that’s come out of this research is that the churn rate through the sector is something like 71% after three years. Now, that’s extraordinary. Even if you take into consideration seasonal workers, RSC workers coming into the country to work, particularly in horticulture, that’s just mind boggling to think that 71% of people are gone after three years.

The cost to the economy of that, for each time somebody turns over out of a job is just extraordinary. What we need to do is make sure that we can address this and have people who come into the sector and want to stay. To feel like they’ve got some path to grow and develop in there, and that there is a long-term view for them.

Now, it can be in all sorts of aspects of the sector. It doesn’t have to be necessarily a path towards farm ownership, because we want this report, and the framework, to apply to people working in the Food and Fibre service industries as well as on farm or on an orchard.

It’s as applicable to anybody who is an owner or an employer as it is to someone who’s a worker. We want everyone to be able to see themselves in here and look at this framework that we’re putting forward and say, this is where I see myself now, these are the things I’d like to think about developing myself, in particular, my leadership. Once we’ve got people who are feeling as though they have got a purpose and a pathway in front of them, we’re more likely to see a more settled and productive workforce sitting there. We see that this has got huge economic as well as social benefits for the sector.

Rachel Baker – Insights (from an insider) on the Nuffield Global Focus Programme.

In this podcast, Rachel Baker, 2024 Nuffield Scholar talks to Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor, Farmers Weekly, and gives a unique perspective from inside Nuffield.

Rachel speaks about about some of the similarities and differences between the farming systems in the countries she has visited with New Zealand’s.

Rachel discusses insights from Indonesia’s primary industries, France’s love of food, Denmark entering an emissions scheme, California’s water challenges and Chile’s low rates of Research and Development.

This is a must listen for anyone considering a Nuffield Scholarship in 2025 or beyond.

Listen to Rachel’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
Welcome to Ideas That Grow, a podcast from Rural Leaders. I’m your host, Bryan Gibson, the Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. We’ve got a very special guest today, a current Nuffield Scholar, Rachel Baker. G’day, Rachel, how are you?

Rachel Baker, 2024 Nuffield Scholar
Yeah, good. Thanks, Bryan. Thanks for having me.

BG:
Now, where are you calling in from? Where’s home for you?

A Nuffield Scholar with a background in many industries.

RB: Home for me is Central Hawkes Bay, tucked up near the Ruahine Ranges. My husband and I graze just under 500 dairy heifers. I guess in my day job, I’m portfolio manager for pit fruit for my farm investments. And also with a dairy background, I do some consulting with dairy farmers.

BG: Quite a range of farming industries involved there.

RB: Yeah, life isn’t a straight line. It’s a wiggly line. There are a few stories behind those changes. But I’ve been fortunate. I’ve got a foot in agriculture, and I guess a foot in horticulture as well. So, it keeps me busy and keeps life interesting.

BG: Was that always going to be the path for you? Did you grow up on a farm or was it something you found?

RB: I grew up on a small farm, but my mother was from a large sheep and farming family here in Hawkes Bay. So, I’ve always been involved in farming, but I actually did a veterinary degree. So, I worked as a veterinarian for a short period of time and then morphed into dairy consulting. Then my husband and I took an opportunity to go share milking. So that’s how we entered the dairy sector and had some really good experiences there and actually sold our cows and bought a dry stock farm. That’s how we ended up grazing dairy heifers.

The transition to horticulture really came about through dairy connections within my farm investments. Because I live in Hawkes Bay, I said yes to an opportunity to oversee some of those early apple developments. That was seven years ago and still involved, yeah, still learning and enjoying it along the way with the dairy.

BG: Attracting more investment into food production sectors is pretty vital. So, you’ve got a big job.

RB: It is a good story because it’s bringing capital into the agriculture and horticultural sector, largely from New Zealanders, which is a really positive story. So, yeah, I’m really pleased to be involved in managing their investments.

Halfway through a Nuffield Scholarship.

BG: Now, you’re smack bang in the middle, I guess, of your Nuffield Scholarship Programme. How’s it going for a start, and what subject area are you looking at?

RB: Yes, I am part way through my scholarship at the moment. I’m interested in looking at New Zealand’s global proposition in terms of being a food exporter. In terms of Nuffield itself, the programme really is comprised of three parts. The third part is that research project and doing individual research, which I’m yet to do.

The Nuffield Contemporary Scholars Conference (CSC).

The first part is a conference where all the scholars from that year from around the globe meet together in a country, which changes every year. It’s a conference looking at global issues as well as the host country itself. We were fortunate that Brazil was the host country for 2024.

We went to Brazil in March and had our global scholars conference there. The second part to Nuffield is a global focus programme, and I’ve just come back in early July from that, which is a small group travelling together through five countries in five and a half weeks looking at food production.

The Nuffield Global Focus Programme (GFC).

BG: Can you tell us more about the Global Focus Programme?

RB: There are a number of different Global Focus Programmes based on different times of the year to try and give an opportunity to fit within your own farming and work calendar, and also different countries as well. The countries our group visited were: Indonesia, France, Denmark.

We also went to California and to Chile. The group was made up of 12. They were a good representation of countries as well. We had six Australians, two from Ireland, a Brazilian, a Chilean, and a Zimbabwean. We all travelled together through that time, and obviously got to know each other really well, as well as looking at the challenges and opportunities in all of those countries.

BG: First up, I mean, having that range of people from diverse farming-related backgrounds must be really cool to just talk while you’re travelling and understand how other people think about things.

RB: It was a really diverse group not only in terms of the countries but also what sectors people were involved in. We had tulip grower from Tasmania through to a pig farmer from Zimbabwe. Also, people involved in international fertiliser and the food trade. We had a really nice cross-section, good conversations, and learning together as a group.

That farmer, peer-to-peer learning, you just can’t beat it. When you’re on the road together for that time, you get to know each other well. You learn a lot from each other as well as, obviously, who you’re meeting day to day.

GFC - first stop Indonesia.

BG: Tell us a little about Indonesia. We forget that it’s one of the most populous countries on Earth. It’s not that far away, but when you think of it, you think of some beaches and things like that. But what food production facilities or operations did you take a look at?

RB: Indonesia was our first country, and it was fascinating. A huge population, well over 200 million. So compared to New Zealand, you couldn’t get a better contrast to start. We were hosted by an Australian who had set up cattle feed lots there over 30 years ago.

We’re really fortunate that we got good insights into a lot of different food sectors as well. We did see cattle feed lots, imported cattle from Australia being finished there in Indonesia, through to spice and pepper processing.

We went out on fishing boats with some local fishermen, right through to seeing pineapple plantations being harvested by hand in 40 plus degree heat and 90 % humidity. So, we got a really good range of scale, but also some real subsistence farming as well – from a single man climbing up trees and harvesting palm sugar and making a living out of that.

BG: And where did you head next? Scandinavia?

Nuffield GFC – France.

RB: So, from Indonesia, we headed to France. We spent our time in Normandy, in the north. And again, we got some good insight into French farming. France is just a wonderful food culture. They really celebrate food and they’re really proud of what they produce. A lot of it is artisan. It’s got provenance associated with it. And so, we got a real feel for that.

French farming is in a challenging place at the moment. They feel they’re under threat from imported food products coming in at a cheaper cost to what they can produce. That’s a challenging time for them. But by the same token, there are a lot of strong cooperatives in France. We got a good insight into some cooperative models, which, of course, having a number of strong cooperatives in New Zealand was really interesting.

BG: Yeah, what you were saying about the narrative that goes along with French food, it is so strong. A lot of people think this is something we could try to emulate here. I guess, put some real culture around our food production. I mean, is that something you see as worthwhile?

RB: As a New Zealand food producer, I think we produce high-quality food. It’s safe food from a food security viewpoint. So, any opportunity I had, I was looking for New Zealand produce in the countries we were visiting. There’s quite a buzz when you actually find New Zealand produce in a store or a supermarket when you’re travelling. So, I think from that regard, the food that I saw, the quality that was in front of the consumer was largely very good.

As food producers, we need to be high quality. There’s a lot of challenge coming to us or at us from countries with lower costs of production. I think quality is paramount and I think we should be proud of that. The provenance of New Zealand, it came up-time and time again. New Zealand was mentioned a lot – that it’s a beautiful country and we produce lovely food. So, we should leverage off that.

BG: Yeah. Now, where did it head next?

Nuffield GFC – Denmark.

RB: Next, we went to Denmark. So, it was an interesting time actually being there because not long after we left Denmark, they announced that agriculture would have an emissions tax from 2030. It was great timing for us. I think while I was away, New Zealand pushed pause on agriculture entering emissions trading scheme. So, the timing to be there in Denmark when they were deciding, they’d made the commitment they were going to go. It was just the uncertainty for farmers around what it actually looked like.

I found Denmark very similar to New Zealand in many ways. So, that was quite a good insight. They have a very high wages, and a high tax rate in Denmark, but obviously they have a very strong education, health, welfare system as well. In terms of trying to make a profit, it was a challenge for Danish farmers at this time.

BG: I’ve read a little about the plan that Denmark has to introduce that emissions levy. I know the agreement was nutted out by the government with stakeholders, and that includes some industry groups from the farming sector, so they did get to help mould it. On the ground there, were there farmers you spoke to? How were they feeling about it? Uncertain, I guess?

RB: I think they just wanted to have some certainty. There’s a great quote that uncertainty is the cancer of business. I think they just wanted to be certain about what the plan and the future looked like for them.

I think from a Danish farmer perspective, they do get good support, and they’ve got some excellent programmes in place around, say, a green accelerator programme. This is where they can get up to 70% rebate on any investment in technology that’s going to advance them towards sustainability and a green future.

It was clear that even though they were going to be entering an emissions tax, there was no doubt they wanted to maintain their food production and their productivity. In terms of entering the scheme was – it was not to reduce the amount of food that they were going to produce. It was just that they were going to produce it in a more environmentally sustainable way. From that perspective, I think that they felt there was support available to them to make the transition, and that’s quite refreshing.

BG: That’s really interesting. When I think about incentives for more sustainable production, you often think of planting and retiring land and that sort of thing. But having subsidies for technology, which is a completely different proposition, seems a bit more enticing to both sides of the equation.

RB: I think they’re looking at multiple solutions. They’re going to pump billions into retiring some peat lands in Denmark to help with their emissions transition. I also think biodiversity came up a lot in most of the countries we visited. And again, that’s a real opportunity for New Zealand, because if you look at the land area that we have in native forest and also in farmed land, what area has actually been retired or riparian planted?

We really need to map that and leverage off that because I believe it’s going to be a global food currency – biodiversity in the future. So, we have it and we’re making really good progress. I think we need to leverage that to our advantage.

Nuffield GFC – California.

BG: Now, California, a big state, a food basket in many ways for the United States. That must have been fun.

RB: Yeah, it was really interesting. It’s the fifth largest economy in the world, if it was to be treated as though it was a country. So, we spent time in California, in Fresno, up through to Sacramento.

It was very hot. We had a heatwave while we were there, which was uncomfortable for most of us. But the big story there is water and really getting a good insight into the water challenges they’ve got in California. With less ice melt out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, more rain, more precipitation, more growing cities, all demanding more water.

California - the water scarcity challenge.

Their sources of water are surface with allocation rights for deep-water, groundwater takes. They’ve got real challenges around a six-inch rainfall in Fresno County. Maybe they get 50% of their allocated volume from surface water. They’re needing to take groundwater as well. So, there are big recharging programmes in place. One farm we went to had spent $15 million USD on a recharge system, which may only be used every three or four years.

Then further up, closer to the Delta, the Government’s proposing putting in a $25 billion USD pipeline in to pump water through to Los Angeles and San Francisco. So, you’ve got real contention around water rights and water use and what priorities should be in place.

So, it was really good for us to see that. But also, you do wonder what areas may not be in horticulture in California in the future. So, there’s some real challenges there for them around not only the infrastructure, but just the allocation of water as well.

BG: Yeah, the last few years, they’ve been focusing on some pretty thirsty crops there, haven’t they?

RB: They have. I guess also the challenge is they’ve had real success growing almonds and selling almonds. But again, they’re almost running the risk of commoditising their own value product by planting more and more hectares. So, it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Nuffield GFC – Chile.

BG: And further down the Coast of Americas, Chile, it always amazes me that place. I’ve not been there, but it’s so long and thin.

RB: It is the longest and thinnest country in the world. Narrow, I think, in diameter than New Zealand, from border to border. So, that was our last country. We left 40 plus degree heat in California and went into the single-digit temperatures in Chile, which was a bit of a shock for us all. But hey, what a great country.

We had some really good insight into Chile and, I guess, in policy to start with. Also, looking at Chile as a country that is open to foreign investment. We saw examples of that in Chile. But again, similar challenges, less ice melt, more precipitation, lack of infrastructure, investment, a slow consenting process.

On-farm storage of water was not really progressing very quickly at all. It’s a low-wage economy. We went to an avocado plantation on very steep country that in New Zealand would be sheep and beef or planted in forestry. Their staff were harvesting with football boots, with sprigs, because it’s so steep. So, they were harvesting avocados by hand. Just to see that on that steep country was quite mind-blowing. They’re a real powerhouse of cherry production and apple production too.

I’m involved in the apple industry with the work that I do so, it was really interesting. Just the scale of some of their operations was really significant. One thing I found interesting was that levy-funded R&D didn’t appear to exist in Chile. That’s a real challenge for them in terms of keeping pace with, say, countries like New Zealand. We could fund more, of course, but we have a real focus on research and development and advancement of varieties, et cetera. So, I felt we certainly had a competitive advantage there.

What’s next on the Nuffield Scholarship Programme?

BG: So, you’re back in Aotearoa, and you’ve got a lot to digest from all that, I guess. Next up for you in the Nuffield Programme is putting pen to paper?

RB: Yeah, that third part of the Nuffield Scholarship is individual travel. So, I’m starting to develop my travel and research plans. I plan to spend some more time away looking, as I said before, that value proposition for New Zealand into the future. So, visiting countries that maybe operate in the same markets as us or maybe they’re customers of ours, and really drilling deeper into that.

BG: Sounds really exciting. Thanks for that, Rachel. All the best for the rest of your Nuffield journey.

The 2025 Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarship applications close 18 August.

RB: Thank you. And for those that are thinking about applying for Nuffield, I’d really encourage them to really think strongly about applying because from my perspective, this is filling that global piece I really wanted to develop, being involved in food production.

This really is unparalleled. It’s an amazing opportunity. For those people that are thinking about applying for a Nuffield Scholarship, put that imposter-syndrome to the side and put your best foot forward because it really is an amazing opportunity.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast presented in Association with Farmers Weekly. For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarship, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, and the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Campbell Parker – Leading with authenticity in a fast-changing sector.

Farmers Weekly Managing Editor Bryan Gibson speaks to Campbell Parker, Chief Executive Officer at DairyNZ.

Campbell discusses his involvement with the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme and how leading with authenticity can go a long way to helping us achieve big things in a time of rapid change.

Listen to Campbell’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

Kia Ora, you’ve joined the Ideas That Grow podcast, brought to you by Rural Leaders. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant ideas that grow so our regions can flourish. Ideas that Grow is presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I am Farmers Weekly Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson, and with me today is Campbell Parker, Chief Executive of DairyNZ. G’day Campbell, how’s it going?

Campbell Parker, CEO DairyNZ
How are you, Bryan? Yeah, I’m pretty good, thanks.

BG: Now, you’re not an alumnus of the Kellogg or the Nuffield Programmes, but you have been called upon to work with some of the Kellogg cohorts, to talk to them about leadership. What does that involve?

Sharing leadership experiences with Kellogg scholars.

Image: Campbell Parker with 2024 Programme One Kellogg Scholars (K51).

CP: I had the opportunity in the end of January to go down and talk to the most current cohort. They were looking for a view around the dairy industry. Obviously, I’m CEO of DairyNZ, but that was where it started.

Ultimately, what you find in those conversations is that you start talking about the Sector, but then you start talking about leadership. The conversation with them ended up in a very interesting space around what are some of the challenges the sector has and where does leadership fit in.

What I also find interesting with a group like that is they’re interested in your own personal leadership journey and where they are in their own journey. How do we learn together and what is the role of leadership? You always find those sessions really stimulating; when you get to talk about what that is and what are we all trying to achieve from a leadership perspective.

BG: Leadership is an interesting thing. For myself, I hold a leadership position in our business. But to tell you the truth, a while back, I wouldn’t have thought leadership was for me. I’m a quiet person. I’m a listener, like journalists often are.

You quite often don’t marry that to what you stereotypically look for in a leader. What do you think about how leadership has evolved over time and what qualities are important?

Leading well starts with understanding yourself.

CP: I think leadership is an evolving subject, and it continues to evolve. But one of the things I’ve seen, I think people have a frame around what they think leadership is. I personally believe everyone can be a leader. First of all, you’ve got to lead yourself. That’s where it starts.

Some of the best leaders I’ve worked with aren’t necessarily the gregarious and outgoing people. But to sum it up, I think one of the most important traits around leadership is authenticity and being really clear about who you are as a person, what your impact on others is, and how you try and lead people.

It does start with having a good understanding of yourself, what motivates you, what drives you, how you react to certain circumstances, and then ultimately, how do you lead people to be the best that they can be. To me, that authenticity is not necessarily about corporate messages, because the people that have the ability to take people with them are the people that are trusted and are authentic. They have very honest conversations around where things need to be.

If I had to put it down to one thing and one word, I would say authenticity is one of the most important things.

BG: Yeah, I guess people are more likely to believe in and get in behind someone who they feel personally, or in a business sense, has their back, that you’ll be listened to, and that you have the chance to thrive on your own as well as within a collective. That’s really important, isn’t it?

Authenticity is key in a sector with little appetite for BS.

CP: It is. I think I was asked a question by the board when I was going through the interview process for this role. They asked me a question around what are the things you’re most proud of in your career. I said to them, and I was very genuine around this, it’s not an event or something, there’s been lots of those. But what I’m most proud of is the people I’ve had the opportunity to work with and the things that we’ve been able to achieve together. To me, that’s the important part of leadership, because when you work with teams and people, and you achieve something you didn’t think was possible, that’s inspirational.

I remember one person that I worked with externally who used to often say, the biggest limitations are those that we put on ourselves. I think we’re all a lot more capable of things from a leadership perspective than what we think we are. It’s through time and experience that you gage those things and you learn from them. If you’re a continuous learner, you want to continue to grow as a human being – I think if you can do that and do that well, then leadership can be really enjoyed and enjoyable

BG: You don’t know what you’re capable of until you give it a go, I guess. That lifelong learning thing.

CP: And sometimes you’re put into situations that are really challenging. Ultimately, you have to be prepared to make a decision and then live with those decisions, but you also need to be, I think, open enough to reflect on and admit when you didn’t get things right or be vulnerable enough to then change. Because, again, back to that point around authenticity and trust, that gives people the ability to trust you and then come with you.

The one thing I would say in our sector, in agriculture, and particularly with farmers, they’re pretty good at reading the ‘BS’ barometer, and that level of authenticity is incredibly important.

Remaining positive about the Sector’s future.

BG: Now, you mentioned you talked to the Kellogg cohort earlier in the year about some of the issues in our food production sector at the moment. Obviously, it’s been a time of rapid change. We’ve had global events, pandemics, that sort of thing, and also lots of regulation come down from government in the previous term. What do you think is the path going forward? How do we align ourselves to make sure we’re doing the best we can do for our sector?

CP: I think one of the things that we really need to make sure that we continue to do is respect all the really good work that have been done by farmers. This is something that’s really important. It’s not just dairy farmers, that’s all farmers. When I look across the Sector and I look at the progress that farmers have made over the last 10 years, we’re in a very different place today than what we were 10 years ago, particularly when you go to things like on-farm practices, and in the environmental space. You get into animal welfare, all those really important, which are quite big global topics and are not going to go away.

It’s really important that as a sector, we continue to have progress around that because it’s expected, whether it be from global players who buy our products or consumers, ultimately. But equally, when you talk to farmers, farmers care deeply about animals on the land, and they ultimately want to leave it better than what they found it. I think hope around that is really important. This sector contributes so strongly to New Zealand from a GDP, but it’s not just that. It’s not just the financial, it’s the communities.

When farming is doing well, communities thrive, and when communities thrive, towns do well. The whole impact on our nation is incredibly important. Yes, we’ve had some tough times. We’ll go through cycles, and we always have in terms of economic cycles and political cycles. But I think we’ve got to have the courage to continue to be passionate and positive about what our future is, because the world needs high-quality food produced in a way that’s sustainable for the environment.

Our farmers ultimately also need economic returns for that to remain viable themselves. It’s an industry that I certainly find not hard to get out of bed every day and get excited about because it’s got a really, really important role to play.

BG: Just a year or two back, it seemed we had a bit of a flash point, I guess, in terms of rural leadership. It was over the emissions pricing process. A lot of farmers and people in rural communities got the feeling that they hadn’t been communicated to well enough by the people who were advocating for them inside the beltway. That led to changes in leadership in various places. That communication and gaining and representing a mandate, that seems to be really important as you go and represent your community outside of it, if you know what I mean.

Learning from the past.

CP: I agree, and I think it is. I think the reality is if you’re talking around things like He Waka Eke Noa processes and things like that. Look, a lot of people put a lot of effort into those processes and tried to communicate things. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a void, and I think it’s important we learn from that because out of that comes this distrust and this concern around what are we advocating for.

It’s interesting because since being in the role, I’ve talked to a lot of dairy farmers, and a lot of farmers have raised that issue with me. When you reflect back on it and say, well, the alternative was we went straight into the ETS, we ended up with pricing, and we didn’t end up with a split gas approach, do you think we should have played that role? They unequivocally say, Absolutely, you should have. Somehow it got lost in translation. I think we do have to learn and reflect on that. I think we do have a role, particularly as industry good organisations to stand up and be clear about what we do stand for and be prepared to take a leadership position.

I know that from my predecessors and people in the business, that absolutely was the case. Somehow that got lost.

Getting the mojo back.

BG: You mentioned farming being not just a driver of economic wealth, but of social well-being. Often when you hear about farming, though, outside of the likes of the Farmer’s Weekly or that sort of thing, it seems to be always on the defensive, if you know what I mean? Farmers have been accused of this and here’s such-and-such from Federated Farmers to defend themselves. It seems we need to maybe front foot things a bit more and believe in what we are and what we bring and that sort of thing and change the conversation a little bit?

CP: I think as farmers and the industry, should be incredibly proud of what we do as a sector. Also, and look, times are tough. When you look directionally through and not just at the financial, the impact that the sector has on communities, people growing, schools, all those things should not be lost sight of.

If I cast my mind forward, I’m 54, if I go back to when I left school in 1987, post the share market crash, everyone said the agricultural sector was a sunset industry. It has certainly not played out that way, and it’s been really, really important for New Zealand. If I cast my mind then forward, I go, absolutely, will it be important in 15- or 20-years’ time? Absolutely. Can we balance both environmental and profitable outcomes? Absolutely. Lots of farmers are doing that. But somehow, we have to try and have a positive voice and get our mojo back.

BG: It does relate to a top-down approach with the likes of Government regulation, that leaves farmers in a place where they don’t feel in control of their own destiny. They’re being given rules with no contextual meaning. Whereas if, say, the likes of the current process of driven plans around scope-three emissions, they lead to premiums. There’s information from customers around the ‘why’. That seems to be a better way to do things in some ways.

CP: I think you’ve always got to understand the context of what you’re trying to drive in. Self-regulation is always better than regulation. I think as an industry, we’ve got to take responsibility for our role to play in those pieces. We’re signed up to things like the Paris Accord. That’s all okay. We’ve just got to make sure that we are contributing and take ownership for our issues.

I think one of the observations I would make, Bryan, in talking with politicians, whether it be regionally or centrally now, is they don’t only want to know what the problems are, they want to know what the solutions are.

We see ourselves as being part of those solutions. But to your point, when people are uncertain, and that’s why we need enduring policy, that’s fear and pragmatic and can be implemented. We did get too much complexity into some of that space. Some of that’s got to be undone. But we need enduring policy that also gives farmers confidence to invest in the things that they need and to continue the direction of travel. If we don’t have that, then it becomes very hard. Confidence is a really important part of anyone’s psyche.

When you feel good about what you’re doing and you’re upbeat about where things are going, you’re more likely to have a positive mindset.

Kellogg - for leaders who want to make a difference.

BG: Just going back to your work with the Kellogg Programme, that must have been… I’ve been to a couple of their alumni events, and they’re amazing events because they’re just full of a wide range of people from all different backgrounds, all different professions. But they’re all just incredibly excited about the Programme, about being with each other and what they’re doing. How did you find it?

CP: They’re always energising. You get in a room with this year’s intake. In January, there was probably 20 people in the room. They’re all passionate about what they do. They ask good questions, which is good and challenging. But they’re there for a reason because they want to make a difference, ultimately.

They also want to challenge themselves to grow as leaders. I think any of those programmes that galvanise people towards that, but more importantly, that self-reflection around where you are and how do you grow and how do you learn from others, is a really good thing to be part of.

The alumni piece around how they continue to connect themselves up; I talked with one of our directors, Tracy Brown, and she remembers doing Kellogg 20 years ago, when she was in her early 20s, and the people she went through at that point. She’s gone on to do a Nuffield and sits on our board, and sits on a number of boards. Some of that started with Kellogg. I think that’s where sometimes the passion gets ignited, but they get drawn to do the Programme, generally, because they’re drawn towards doing it for a deeper personal reason.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT, and FoodHQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

Hamish Murray: Building stronger on-farm teams by getting out of the way.

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

The John Daniell Memorial Trust has kindly agreed to support two Kellogg Rural Leadership course participants annually.

This support comes in the form of two scholarships per year of $5,000.

Successful applicants will be expected to present to the trust either in person or online within three months of the conclusion of their Kellogg research project.

Learn more about the Trust and applicant eligibility below.

Aims of the trust.
To perpetuate John Daniell’s enthusiasm, love and philosophy in all aspects of pastoral farming.

To further promote and assist in achieving his long-held objective of increasing research effort into hill country and pastoral farming.

To recognise John Daniell’s significant contribution to the NZ farming industry.

Objectives of the trust.
To encourage or promote any idea, activity or project that is seen as capable of furthering understanding, knowledge or appreciation of any aspect of farming practice.

To encourage places of learning, person, organisations or government departments to participate in research and demonstration associated with specific farming projects.

To provide and/or assist in the provision of scholarships, bursaries, lectures, seminars, trophies and other benefits of incentives.

To promote research and demonstration of means of achieving the maximum volume and value of products consistent with the maintenance of a high standard of animal and pasture management.

To promote research and the demonstration of management systems to enable pastoral farmers to achieve optimum production and profitability on an ongoing basis.

The advancement of education in the farming of pastoral property.

To invest in any farming resource which will enable the research and demonstration of modern farming practices.

Eligibility.
1). Scholarships will be awarded to those who are focused on practical pastoral livestock farming or leadership in the pastoral livestock farming

2). Preference is be given to participants from the Wairarapa region in the first instance

3). Applicants must be NZ citizens

4). Applications to be lodged with the intended start date of the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme

5). The scholarship will be paid by the trust direct into the applicants nominated bank account at the commencement of the course.

Applications.
Applications for a John Daniell Memorial Trust Scholarship to attend Kellogg Programme One 2026, will need to be submitted to Delwyn Pringle at the email below by Sunday 5 October 2025.

NB. You will need to submit your Kellogg application by this date as well. Please indicate on your application that you are applying for this scholarship.

To start the process please email Trust Secretary Delwyn Pringle for an application form at delwyn@bakerag.co.nz

New Energy – The 2024 Nuffield Biennial Conference.

New Energy, the 2024 Nuffield Biennial Conference.

There’s just a little over a month to go until the Nuffield Biennial begins.

Open to Nuffield alumni and their partners, this key event runs 23-26 May.

The Nuffield Biennial features a stellar line up of new technology and innovation, networking opportunities and the best produce from the Taranaki region. Take a look at the planned schedule below.

Contact Annie Chant at Anniechant@ruralleaders.co.nz for any queries.

Or book here now.

The Conference schedule at a glance.

Arrival Day (Thursday 23 May)
2022 Scholar presentations and panel.
Drinks and networking dinner.

Day Two (Friday 24 May)
2020, 2021 Scholar presentations and panel.

Field Trips
Option One, Energy supply chain
Ross Dingle (CEO) Port of Taranaki site visit, Q&A energy sector leaders.

Option Two, Branching out
Michelle Bauer, Venture Taranaki.
Medicinal and Botanic growth followed by a visit to the Marae for a presentation with Meat to You and Michelle Bauer on Taranaki’s regional diversity.

Option Three
Taranaki Gardens visit with Ainsley Luscombe.

Later – Gin tasting with Juno Gin and buffet dinner.

Day Three (Saturday 25 May)
2023 Scholar presentations and panel.

Field Trips
Option One, Emissions and Efficiency
Rotary Cow Shed – Shane Arden.
Solar on Farm – Philip Luscombe, Matt and Roger.
Nestle Net Zero pilot dairy farm – Dairy Trust Taranaki.

Option Two, Got Milk
PKW Sheep Milk –Spring Sheep Milk.
Tawhiti Museum.

Later – Egmont Honey talk, seated dinner and band ‘Avalanche’.

Nuffield Biennial details at a glance.

Where: The Devon Hotel, New Plymouth (we have held some rooms here, though these are booking out).
When: Starts 3pm, Thursday, 23 May.
Register below by Wednesday, 1 May.

Fee: Registration is $475 + GST. Registration fee includes most catering, field trips and the Conference.

Jen Corkran – Trust, truth and how we learn.

Farmers Weekly Managing Editor Bryan Gibson speaks to Jen Corkran, Senior Animal Protein Analyst at Rabobank and a 2023 Kellogg Scholar.

Jen discusses her day job to provide red meat insights to clients and farmers. Jen also reveals what her Kellogg research tells us about trust, truth and the way farmers take on information.

Listen to Jen’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly.
You’re with Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Farmers Weekly Editor, Bryan Gibson, and with me today is Jen Corkran, a Kellogg Scholar. G’day Jen, how’s it going?

Jen Corkran, 2023 Kellogg Scholar, Senior Animal Protein Analyst at Rabobank.
Hi, Bryan. It’s good here. How are you?

BG: Yeah, pretty good, thanks. To get started, tell us a little bit about your background. Where are you from?

Foundations in rural Hawkes Bay.

JC: I grew up in rural Central Hawkes Bay, in a little town called Waipukarau. My mum was a teacher at a primary school there, Flemington School, so right in the heart of sheep and beef country in Hawkes Bay.

I grew up and went to primary school there and I think from that grew this really in-depth passion for the agriculture industry in New Zealand. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a farmer. So, I think that background set me up well for that.

BG: Did that follow through to higher education or your first jobs, that sort of thing?

JC: Yeah, it did. After high school, I went to Massey in Palmerston North and studied agricultural science down there for three years, which was good fun. From there, I went farming in mid-Canterbury for a couple of years on a big beef farm. This is early, mid-2000’s, before the dairy boom. There was still a lot of sheep and beef country down that way. Before this farm did end up converting to dairy, it was all flood-irrigated beef, and spent two years down there as stock manager, which was great fun, especially coming straight out of university and not actually growing up on a big farm.

We did have a lifestyle block there in the Hawkes Bay with 70 odd sheep and a few cattle. But this gave me that real, in-depth understanding of farming, and through the seasons, and the longer term understanding of what it takes.

From that, I got inspired to go back to uni to do some post-grad. I did an honors year in Pastoral Science and Sheep and Beef Farm Systems. After that, it was great coming back into that, having spent some time farming as well. Then after few years in the UK I moved back to New Zealand.

Senior Animal Protein Analyst, Rabobank Research Team.

BG: Yeah. And you’re with Rabobank right now. What do you do there?

JC: Yes. I’m the Senior Animal Protein Analyst in the Rabo Research Team. So our job in Rabo Research is pretty much to provide insights and understanding around what’s happening in the markets in that global picture. My area in animal protein is red meat, for New Zealand, so sheep and beef. We cover all the commodities. In the team I sit in, we’ve got dairy in New Zealand, and sheep, beef, and then we’ve got a whole bunch of other Rabo Research analysts who sit out of Sydney and Australia and cover off a whole bunch of other stuff.

So great to be part of a global team as well. There are analysts all around the world for Rabobank. We’ve got real global reach to find out what’s going on in other markets, what’s driving some of the things that we’re seeing down here in New Zealand. We provide that insight to clients and farmers in New Zealand, arming people with good information so they can make the best decisions for their farming businesses.

BG: We enjoy getting your guys insights across our desks here at the Farmers Weekly. They usually turn into good stories. Now, talking today about your Kellogg Scholarship Programme. Tell us a little bit about what you decided to study?

Kellogg Programme research on pastoral farmer learning preferences.

Image: Jen Corkran speaking in Rabobank site at the Wanaka A&P, March 2024. (Rabobank’s Scott Levings in blue looking on).

JC: My research for Kellogg was on farmer learning preferences, pastoral farmers, to be specific. I was with Barenbrug New Zealand for over 10 years before starting with Rabobank. So, when I did Kellogg last year, I was still with Barenbrug. As a Pastoral Seed Company, they really wanted to understand how farmers are learning and getting information; pastoral is our bread and butter here in New Zealand. We turn grass into saleable protein.

How our farmers learning anything to do with harvesting homegrown feed? So, we know that the most profitable farm systems in New Zealand harvest the highest amounts of homegrown feed because it’s the cheapest form of feed, and they turn that into milk or meat. So, I guess Barenberg is a business, and I really was quite passionate about this topic, too, because at the time, I was in a pasture specialist role around helping farmers get the best from their grass and crops. How do they learn? How do they prefer to get information? And from that, what do they do with it, basically?

It was essentially more of a social science topic in terms of adult learning preferences. And some interesting results came out of that. It was a challenging project, but certainly understanding people and what makes them work is part of what we all do every day, too. So, yeah, it was great.

BG: That issue of tech and knowledge transfer through to the boots on the ground in the farming sector is one that has had lots of people scratching their heads over time. What were the key findings? How do farmers like to learn things.

What the Kellogg research revealed.

JC: So, there’s a lot to it. I had to go right back to the start to understand some of what’s already been done in that space. So, a big literature review in terms of what do we already know about how our farmers learn? You can look overseas, but really we’re quite a unique here in New Zealand, and we want to know how we, as more outdoor feed systems, are doing things.

So, yes, a big literature review in terms of what’s already been done. There’s a lot of work that’s been done, but it’s quite complex. But the real interesting findings came with actual farmer interviews. Just talking to farmers all around New Zealand, both in the dry stock, red meat sector, and also dairy, cropping, arable, whatever it might be, to find out how they learn. What we found was these two broad pillars, when it comes to learning, there’s a purely learning aspect, and then there’s a social aspect. They’re both equally as important as each other. And when it comes to learning, there’s information. People need to know what it is that they’re after. They also have to make a decision.

But before all of that, they need to be aware of what the thing might be. So for example, a new type of crop that might suit a certain area of New Zealand, say a summer crop where it’s summer dry, and this thing’s going to provide protein over that time. Before a farmer is even going to think about putting this new crop in, they’re going to be aware that it even exists and then understand how it works. What overlies that is understanding it through information, so whether it’s data or science or trials or your neighbour tried it, to make a decision to whether it will work for them. So that’s understanding their own farm business and seeing if it’s relevant.

Relevance is hugely important. But what overlays basically everything is this social aspect around trust and trusting the information that they’re getting is both true and relevant to them. Also, I guess, having a yarn about it with other people, as farmers in New Zealand, like to do. So this whole networks, trusted networks, trust is really key to farmer learning.

The other big one, I guess, that overlays the learning aspect is relevance to farm system. So, a dairy farmer is not going to necessarily be selling the same pasture and using it in the same way as a sheep farmer who struggles with more dry or harder conditions or in different soil types. They were the key pillars, I suppose. Obviously, in interviews with farmers, it was just so interesting to see all the themes lining up – networks and trust, those two words came up-time and time again.

Building trust takes time.

BG: Obviously, trust is the key. It doesn’t really matter where that trust lies. It could be different for different farmers, say, friends or colleagues or catchment group members, or it could be the seed rep or someone else. As long as there’s that relationship there, is that the thing that drives any evolution?

JC: Yeah, 100 %. What I basically did with the interviews is get a transcript and look for themes – a thematic analysis of themes. Some of the keywords that kept coming up were ‘trust takes time’, and trust doesn’t have to be for a person necessarily. It could be for a brand or a company or a business or a thing. But building trust takes time and has to be something that’s proven. I think a lot of farmers, and it’s something we hear as people in the industry all the time, you can’t just assume that you meet someone and then they’re going to trust what you’ve got to say. You have to earn it. And ‘earning trust’, I think, was one of the key things that kept coming up again and again. A business can become a trusted business within the inc of New Zealand also, and so can individual people.

Often, farmers said, they might have an agronomist who works for X company, and it’s the agronomist that they trust, and they’re going to follow that agronomist wherever they go through their career or their seed rep, or whoever it might be. Or it might be that they trust this particular brand, and they’re going to follow that. It could be whatever, but it has to be earned. I guess, backed up by some positive that they’re seeing. A lot of us work in the same way. We want to trust what we’re doing, and it becomes easier to make a decision if you trust that it is a safe one, I suppose.

BG: Farm owners hold a lot of the purse strings in terms of the wider industry, so they’ve got a lot of people coming down the driveway trying to sell them the newest and best thing. They do have that detector to go, ‘well, is this going to work for me. Or is this just someone trying to sell me something new and unproven or a one-size-fits-all approach?’ They really need to have that filter on, don’t they?

Trust in rural New Zealand.

JC: It was really interesting, because with the Kellogg Programme itself, we do the research project as one part of it. And then the other part of it that’s within the actual course itself in the in-person phases, is learning for all of us on the course. A lot of this was around critical thinking. How do you get to a place of trust, asking the right questions, critically thinking about things so that you are asking the right curious questions to find out if something is true or not.

We live in an age where there’s so much information out there. You type something into a little square on your computer screen, and you can come up with scrolls of information. But what’s actually true and what’s not, and how do we trust it? So, it was really interesting. Some of the stuff we learned about misinformation and disinformation and critical thinking on Kellogg really paralleled a lot with what the farmers were naturally saying and doing.

Some of the most experienced business people are farmers, right? They have to be across so many different things. And so for me, doing a leadership course and seeing it tie in naturally with these amazing farmers around New Zealand was really cool.

They naturally have this ‘right, can I trust you or can I not?’ And a lot of them said, it sounds negative, but they didn’t mean it in a negative way. I’ll always start from a place of distrust trust and then move to trust. It’s not necessarily that you’re going to have trust straight away. So good thing to think about, I guess, for anyone dealing in rural industries in New Zealand.

The Kellogg experience.

BG: Yeah, for sure. How was your experience going through the Kellogg Programme?

JC: It was great, Bryan. You have six months, basically, where you have this tight knit group of anywhere between 18 and 24 people. There was 23 people on our course, cohort 50, we were last year. You get really close to these people. You spend the first 10 days down at Lincoln together all day, every day, learning about leadership and learning about yourself.

You’re on this journey together and so those networks that you make with the people in your cohort, you can’t really put any value on it because it’s golden. Because you’re doing the journey together, you’re in this challenging but stimulating environment. It was really, really great. And that network is for life now with those people.

Outside of the people that you’re doing your Kellogg with, I think for me, it was the leaders that were put in front of us. Seeing the characteristics that they had was really inspiring. They’re optimistic, a lot of them, there’s a lot of humility there. They’re curious, they ask questions, they’re open-minded. These are the ones that stood out to me as the most natural leaders.

They’ve obviously got all of these learnings along the way that have helped them get to this point that seems magical. You can see things in yourself that you maybe already have or that you need to work on because you’re just getting this exposure to these things that you wouldn’t necessarily get in that six month period.

Critical thinking, being curious, asking questions, keeping an open mind. There’s these themes that keep coming up over and over again. You see places for your own growth too. You see places where you’ve had challenging situations and you realise why, perhaps. So, In terms of leadership, there’s a heap of learning. In terms of that bigger picture thinking, where this tiny little export nation sitting in the South Pacific Sea, selling produce to the world, but we are affected globally by a lot of what goes on.

For me, very much in that pastoral science space at the time, it opened my mind up to this bigger picture way of thinking, which was my big learning. I did my Kellogg last year in my mid-30s. A great time to do it because I’d had a bit of life experience, a bit of career experience, but still you realise how much you’ve got to go and do. So, it was really good. Yeah, loved it.

BG: Awesome. And what’s the plan for you? Just still sinking your teeth into global protein markets, that thing?

JC: Yeah, that’s correct. Kellogg did open my mind to other opportunities and started with Rabo at the end of last year. So very much in that getting into the role space, what’s driving global protein consumption. We’re going through a challenging time right now in the red meat sector with meat prices, especially. There’s a number of reasons for that. What is the light at the end of the tunnel? When might we see it? So no, it’s really good, and I certainly, leapt right into that big picture thinking, which is great.

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

Dr Matt Sowcik. Humility and finding a common purpose.

Dr Matt Sowcik is currently on sabbatical from his role as Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Education and leadership at University of Florida.

As part of his time here in NZ, he joined the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme in Lincoln. He spoke to Scholars (and Bryan Gibson) about the power of humility in leadership and its role in working together toward a common cause.

Listen to Matt’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

You’re with ideas that grow the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m Farmers Weekly Editor Bryan Gibson. This week we’ve got a guest from a bit further afield than usual. We’ve got Dr. Matt Sowcik, who is Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication at the University of Florida.

G’day, Matt. How’s it goin?

Matt Sowcik, Associate Professor, University of Florida.
It’s going great. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Blessed to be here in New Zealand and certainly excited to talk to all the good folks out there.

BG: Now, your area of academic expertise is leadership in the agricultural space.

An American agri-leadership academic in Aotearoa.

MS: Yeah, actually it’s first in leadership. I am interested in the psychology around leadership. I got an undergraduate in psychology and then went off and got a master’s in organisational leadership, and then a PhD in leadership studies.

I had applied it to businesses for a really long time, but found that the space of ag, natural resources and fibre really needed leaders. So was excited to join a number of colleagues down at the University of Florida, to really put all my time into this context. I think it’s so important as we more forward.

BG: You’re on a sabbatical at the moment, taking in a few leadership programmes around the world. And are we the first stop?

MS: Yeah, this is the first stop. And I’m really interested in this idea of humility and how humility impacts leadership. Certainly it’s something in the States that we need a little bit more. And as I was looking across the world, New Zealand was a wonderful place to study how leadership and humility were impacting this particular context. So came to Christchurch, worked in Lincoln, certainly understanding your rural leaders a lot better from the Kellogg Programme.

Humility in leadership.

BG: I’m interested in the concept of humility in leadership. Can you just sort of unpack that a little bit for me?

MS: Yeah. One of the things we struggle with is humility. It is so important and there’s so many reasons for it, but we’ve been under this impression that humility is thinking less of ourselves or not thinking about ourselves. The truth is, it’s just not true. I think New Zealanders really do that well. Farmers really do that well. This idea of humility, having confidence in ourselves, but not overconfidence.

When you get into overconfidence, you miss a lot of opportunities to develop and grow and adapt and innovate, and certainly to be a good leader. So, my interest was in better understanding this idea of how we could have the proper perspective of ourselves, others, this larger world, and use that in a leadership capacity.

BG: The amount of academic research that has gone into how to manage teams and be a leader is massive, isn’t it? It does seem to be we embrace more of a ground-up approach to leadership these days than, what did they used to call it, arrow management, or it’s my way or the highway, type thing.

MS: That’s absolutely right. Yeah, I think that’s true. I think we started to distinguish a little bit better this idea of managing or keeping things the same and running to an idea of leadership where we need really great ideas. Those ideas don’t often just come with one leader at the top who rides in on the horse and saves the day. It’s really this idea around how do we collectively get a group of people, all of their wisdom and intelligence, and certainly skills, and utilise that to adapt and grow and change the world for the better?

BG: It’s softened to if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room, and that sort of thing.

MS: That’s exactly right. Yeah. No, you find that no one person is going to be smarter than the entire room, and if you are, you’re in the wrong room.

Sitting in on the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme.

Image: Matt Sowcik speaking on Kellogg Programme One in late January.

BG: So, you’re sitting in on the Kellogg Programme at the moment.

MS: Yeah, it just wrapped-up yesterday, so I had an opportunity to sit through the nine days and to really engage myself. We’re so busy at times, we’re running with administrative stuff and doing our own programmes, that we don’t take the opportunity to learn.

I think what the University of Florida has blessed me with is this opportunity to come out, take a break from everything and just sit down and learn again and engage with this process.

So the Kellogg Programme, as humble as it is, allowed me to come in, have conversations, engage, explore the Programme, and really get to hear from some amazing academics, researchers in the private sector, certainly those who are doing the good work in farming, food and fibre. It was just a holistic experience to understand how leadership works so well here and certainly what we can bring back to the States to be better leaders there.

BG: It’s interesting you say leadership works well here. I don’t know how much you know about the recent history of New Zealand farming, but we’ve had kind of, some would say a leadership schism or something like that. Our farming leaders have really been under the pump and some of them haven’t survived the process. So we’re kind of soul searching in a way.

Working together with humility to solve the big challenges.

MS: I think it’s all about perspective. It’s this idea of the current problems, and certainly I can speak to those. The US is going through some current leadership crisis and of understanding how to engage with people.

What I saw on the Kellogg Programme made me feel positive and optimistic about the next five to ten years, especially around natural resources and farming; this idea that people are coming together. We need to move towards, in kind of a humble fashion, working together and engaging together. Those old philosophies of, ‘I have been doing this for ten years and I must have all the answers’, I didn’t see that on the Programme. What I saw was a collective effort of all of these sectors coming together.

I think that’s the positivity I talk about. I know there’s some current issues, some bumps in the road that are happening right now, but when I look at ten years out, about the leadership that’s happening here, I really feel optimistic that those engagements, those connections are being made and that folks are starting to realise, humbly, that we’re going to need to work together to be able to move forward in a positive direction.

BG: Yeah, I think some of those issues we’ve had last year or two really come down to communication. A failure of communication by government to sell its story, failure of communication by farming, leadership to report back to its stakeholders what’s happening through various processes. And if you’re not communicating well, then people will fill that gap with their own stories, if you know what I mean.

MS: I do know what you mean. I think there’s something so humbling about that, isn’t there? There’s this idea that we need people and people need us and we have to have that line of communication.

They often talk about communication as being the most important tool of leadership. If you don’t do that, if that breaks down, all of the other pieces, the innovation, the adaptation, the opportunity to move forward collectively, all really suffer from that.

The first step is to have some self-awareness, to be able to say, we have failed over the last couple of years to do this. So, how do we make sure we don’t fail in the future? How do we collectively come together even if we don’t agree? How do we have that civil discourse so we can understand eachother better?

The truth is, you’re all in the same boat here. I mean, it doesn’t matter who you are: Government, farmer, business owner, everybody’s on the same island moving in the same direction. And there’s some really important pieces of that, whether it’s exports, whether it’s understanding the changes in climate and some of the issues you’ve been dealing with around that. It’s a collective effort to be able to move that forward.

The challenge of individualism in the US and NZ.

BG: Yeah, we’ve had quite a number of discussions here about ‘carrot or stick’ in terms of getting progress going in environmental changes, sustainability, that sort of thing. I think farmers being sort of individualistic type people in a certain way, tend to want to be in control of their own destiny more and have (to be given a strong) reason why they should do something. Market driven approaches often work best, rather than government-led regulatory approaches. Is that similar in the States?

MS: Yeah, I actually think it’s probably more so. It’s not just farmers that we see that from, we’ve built our country on that idea of individualism and the ‘American dream’. Go get it! Pull your boots up! You can make it happen! What we’re finding is that sort of approach really lacks some humility.

My interest in researching that is, can we address some of these issues now? What we’re trying to understand in the States is, there are some problems where you can do that. If you think about it, there’s some issues that happen on a farm tractor breaks, you know that broken piece, you can fix that broken piece. You’re having some issue with a particular crop, you know that well enough. But, the problem with things like climate change and policy, they’re not simple fixes.

There’s this wonderful quote that I really love that talks about ‘all systems are not broken. There’s no system that’s broken. Every system is perfectly aligned to get what it gets.’ And what that means is no matter which way a system works out, it’s going to get the results you see at the end.

So the truth is you have to almost break it yourself if you want to change it, if you want to fix it. Those issues aren’t ones that are easily fixed by one person. They’re not like just changing out a gear. You have to bring people together, if we’re going to talk about things like policy and climate change. Those issues are ones that we need to have more than one person and they’re going to be issues that we’re going to have some trial and error, and mistakes on. Then as we move that forward, just continue to make it better and better along the way.

BG: One concept that has had some real wins over the years in New Zealand are catchment groups. That’s a collection of farmers and other stakeholders in say, a valley, where all the water runs into the same place. They all work together to protect the environment more, clean up the waterways, that sort of thing. What they found is that that sort of groupthink way of doing things with aligned goals, and to be honest neighbour peer pressure, really helps to get things moving in the right direction.

MS: Yeah, it just makes sense. It’s stepping back from ‘me’ being the only thing that’s important to collectively saying ‘we’re all important’ and that actually there’s this bigger purpose we’re all working towards.

Common purpose.

A lot of the research around humility has suggested that this idea of people coming together with a common purpose, which really is leadership common purpose, you start to understand not only will you achieve that purpose, but a lot of other things come along with it.

One of those is performance or outcomes. You’re more likely to achieve an outcome if everyone’s buying into it. If there is some of that social pressure, ultimately everybody kind of shares information, communicates and engages in that process.

I’m not surprised to hear that, and I think we need to do that a lot more. It’s ‘how are my problems also similar to others’ problems?’ What are they doing? How are they engaging? Instead of keeping that in and pretending that’s some market advantage.

The real market advantage here is being able to share information, because if I figure something out or you figure something out, that changing, sharing, engaging, really is a process to not only move in that direction, but then to be able to move further in a direction, because things will continue to change.

BG: Can you tell me a little bit about this leadership programme you teach at the University of Florida?

Leadership education at University of Florida.

MS: I’m very fortunate. I have a kind of three-pronged responsibility at the University of Florida. Certainly, teaching is one of them. We teach the undergraduate level for the entire university. We offer a certificate and minor in leadership studies to undergraduates to get them started or interested in leadership.

We teach a masters and PhD in leadership in ag and natural resources. So that’s an opportunity to bring those folks in who are interested in doing some consulting in the area or going off and teaching leadership for land grant universities. That’s just one part of what I do.

I also do research. We’re a research one institution. So, looking at how we build organisational leadership programmes within different ag industries. I’m real interested in this idea of how do we build great capacity in those who are going to take over farms, who are going to work in those communities and engage in that process? How do we start to develop that young talent? But my favourite part of my job is what we call extension, and this is going out and practicing it. So, here I run two leadership programmes myself.

One is for our county commissioners. We have 67 different counties in Florida, usually a board of five. Folks kind of oversee that when they get elected, they come to our programme and they start to learn a little bit about leadership. They start to learn a little bit about the practice of leadership in that government setting and we help them better understand how ag and natural resources are impacting their job in a way that they can lead better from that government seat and work together as a board.

Then I also will go out to different ag and natural resource industries and provide training and engagement. Really those three approaches are my job and it leads to what I think is a healthier Florida and certainly a Florida that really appreciates ag and natural resources as we move forward.

Experiential leadership education with Rural Leaders’ Kellogg Programme.

Certainly speaking of the Kellogg Programme I think the things that I learned there is this is an extraordinary programme where individuals from different industries have an opportunity to come and communicate, engage with each other. What I really loved about the Programme is that they consistently, and in a very humble way, said, you’re going to get ‘a little bit’ out of what we talk about.

But the power is collectively coming together. And when we talk about communication, when we talk about humility, it is the folks in the room having access to each other, to share, to engage, and that’s really the power of the Kellogg Programme. Besides all the wonderful speakers and opportunities, it’s that ability for individuals in the Sector to be able to come together and communicate.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Hamish Murray: Building stronger on-farm teams by getting out of the way.

Emma Crutchley, 2018 Kellogg Scholar, talks to Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly managing editor about some of the challenges sheep and beef farming faces in a water-short region.

Emma discusses her Kellogg research, the Value Chain Innovation Programme, and the work being done on ‘Puketoi’ to find value-add.

Listen to Emma’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week, we are talking to Otago sheep and beef farmer, Emma Crutchley.

Bryan Gibson:
G’day, Emma. How’s it going?

Emma Crutchley, 2018 Kellogg Scholar, sheep, beef and arable farmer.
Good, thank you Bryan. How are you?

BG: Yeah, I’m really good. Yeah, so whereabouts in Otago are you?

EC: My husband, and I and two children live in a little inland basin called the Maniototo in Central Otago on a sheep, beef, and arable farm here called Puketoi.

BG: Sounds like a lot of work.

Maniototo sheep, beef and arable farming.

EC: Yep. So, I grew up here. My grandfather bought the farm in 1939, and we go a couple of more generations back here in the Maniototo. He’s one of the youngest sons, and he moved over from Kyeburn to Puketoi then.

I am an ’80s child, so I remember little bits of farming growing up through there. And I’m the youngest daughter out of…I’ve got an older brother. When I was younger, I had a love for animals and the farm and I could literally be found in any lamb pen, in any dog kennel, any filthy, smelly, or challenging job.

Growing up, I would be neck-deep in it. Mum and dad never really had a chance to get me out of it, and not that they ever thought that was a thing. They were very supportive of all their children, regardless of gender, being involved in the farm. I guess growing up here, I went away to boarding school and continued my love for the farm straight to Lincoln, and I never really looked anywhere else. From there, I moved on to work as a rural professional, as an agronomist, working in Christchurch for PGG Wrightson, and then later working for Pamu out of Wellington.

I knew I’d return home to the farm, but I was always a little bit hesitant because I love being around people and I love my networks and the social life side of it. I knew if I moved home, I was moving to a relatively isolated place away from a lot of the people that I really enjoyed being around.

I knew that it was the best opportunity I had and always something I really wanted to do. So I moved home in 2009, and imported a husband to the Maniototo, because it won’t come as a surprise, but being a small, rural community, everyone’s relatively related. I knew I had to find a husband before I moved home. So, yeah, he came home, and he moved here in 2010. And yeah, so we’ve worked to take over the family farm from my parents.

We’ve got just under 500 hectares of irrigation. The rainfall here is often what ‘wows’ people, it’s a 350ml rainfall. So irrigation creates the resilience we need to do what we do. We’re arable, so we grow about 100 hectares of arable crops: wheat, barley, peas, linseed, clover, rye for seed, and a few other bits-and-bobs as they come along.

We’ve got an angus stud as well. So we sell about 25 stud bulls each year. The main thing we do here, that is our main point of production, is our lambs. We have about six and a half thousand ewes. And apart from replacements, we finish all lambs born on the farm and also purchase more store lambs in January and carry them through as well to meet the demands of what we can produce and who we supply.

I do a lot in the advocacy space with Federated Farmers in Otago and also as a director for Irrigation New Zealand. My husband is very involved and he leads a lot of the rural fire stuff in this area. Being in a dry climate, it’s one of our challenges, I suppose.

BG: That sounds like a massive and diverse life you’ve got.

EC: Yeah, there’s a wee bit going on. They’ve got two kids of the mix, two, eight, and 10, so they keep us on our toes.

BG: Now, you mentioned the engagement with the Rural Leaders Programme was a Kellogg report, I think it was in 2018, that was on how to manage water efficiently and what that might mean. I guess it’s an issue that’s close to your home – and your heart. That’s why you took it on?

Kellogg research into water sharing in a water-short catchment.

EC: Well, as you know in 2017, one of the top election issues was around freshwater and how it’s managed in New Zealand. There was a lot of pressure around irrigation and the association with water quality and quantity. At that time, I was a director on our local irrigation company.

Being in this extreme climate where we are short growing season – long winters, and the value that irrigation is to our business in terms of the resilience and our adaption to climate change, I knew when I applied for the Kellogg Programme, exactly what I wanted to study in terms of a research project.

I’d been looking at it for a while, because the kids were, at the time, I think they were two and four, and at that time they’re starting to get a little bit more…I don’t know…I just went and did it!

So, my project was on water sharing in a water-short catchment, which was basically focusing in around, freshwater governance, or even crossing into environmental governance. I looked at different models from around the world and different examples of how water was managed, ownership rights, community management, and then investigated some of the policy settings we have. Also some of the solutions that might work in that space.

I think one of the learnings I got out of that was, as farmers in New Zealand we’re incredibly individualistic in how we run our businesses and that is a reflection of the challenges. The challenges we faced in the ’80s, we found ourselves then in that time of high interest rates and challenging Rogernomics type stuff. As individual farmers we had to farm our way out of it. We did that really, really well. But then that’s led us to being really innovative.

We need to understand the ‘why’ as to why the change is happening. I’m probably going a little bit off track here, but that project set the scene for me, for doing a lot of work over the last six years in the advocacy space and advocating for not only enabling farmers room to understand the ‘why’, but also those connections with stakeholders and the importance of that.

At the end of the day, the government calls the shots on policy, but the people that are voting for the government are our stakeholders, our New Zealand public, and the importance of understanding that dynamic for long-term goals rather than focusing on short-term advocacy outcomes.

BG: Yeah, I know you’ve done a lot of work. We had some stories in the newspaper this year on some of the work you’ve done to advocate for some changes to some of the water plans down your way?

Farming and the environment.

EC: I guess the thing that in Otago, we’ve worked first off the bat with land and water plans and regional policy statement, and I guess we’re also one of the most diverse regions in a Otago. For me, or for everyone really, farming systems in New Zealand are heavily intertwined with the environment. There’s always going to be public interest in farming because of our association with the environment that we farm in.

Everyone’s always looking over our fence. From that, it’s like, how do we set it up, so we enable farmers who are very good at change. So for that example, multiple challenges can be solved with one solution, and one challenge can be solved with multiple solutions. And what I mean by that is, how do you enable policy settings that enable this diverse, incredibly stunning region to actually find the scope within those policy settings to innovate around the challenge and to solve the different water quality, biodiversity, climate change challenges that we have faced.

I think advocacy is probably…I think it’s changing. We need to start learning. But it’s like communicating in a way which enables you to be understood. And my thoughts around that is we had in the Upper Taieri, one of our biggest challenges was the Upper Taieri plain and the diverse hydrology landscape that was tied up in the national wetland regulations. Then what that was the unintended consequence that that was going to create.

So, we had our big jobs for a nature project set up at that time, which involved the relationships with multiple stakeholders. I guess we always knew that if we were going to be successful in changing the settings around the wetland regulations that we needed to have a common ground with our stakeholders and what we were trying to achieve.

I know there’s a lot of narrative around, for example, the stock exclusion regulations and the huge cost they create on farmers. If you can flip that into, we need the tools in the toolbox to manage our environment, in a way that is best for the environment and best for our rural communities. We need to recognise the role that livestock can play within those systems to control our weeds and help with pest control. That was a common ground that we found.

So when we went to MFE with that case to Minister Parker, it was probably a more resonating message than just saying, ‘Oh, it’s a huge cost of fencing, and we’re going to lose all this land that we can graze’, which doesn’t resonate with everyone. They actually don’t care. They just want fresh water and they want a pristine environment. It’s explaining it in a way that actually identifies the unintended consequence of that.

So off the back of that, we managed to get that cut out of the stock exclusion rules, but it’s still a work in progress. We’ve still got to continue that conversation with our regional council as part of our water plan.

The art of making the tough conversations easier.

BG: Sounds like you’re at the forefront of a type of evolution that’s been talked quite a lot in terms of managing our natural assets – has many stakeholders who mostly want to do the same thing. It’s not an us and them farmers versus, say, fishermen or environmentalists or anything like that. And if you can in advance find those shared values, then it’s much more easy to overcome the challenge.

EC: Yeah, and I think I was talking to Julia Jones a couple of months ago and we’re brainstorming. I think she said something, and it was ‘we have a responsibility to seek to understand diverse perspectives’, then I added on the end, ‘we also need to give ourselves the personal freedom to change our minds’. I guess for me, that crosses into the fact that we are a small part of the population in New Zealand.

Like a lot of people like those in Auckland don’t really care about farming. They might want a pristine environment, but they don’t care about farmers as such. So the best way to get people to understand your perspectives is to actually listen to them and when you can create an environment which lets people feel like they’re understood – it takes away the defensiveness and the silos, and it creates more of a safe space to continue that conversation.

So when you’re really passionate, I think, and I have to be aware of this, because I’m really passionate about Ag and what we do, but passion can show up in many different ways. And when you’re passionate about a topic like farming or the environment and both, probably, most of the farmers fit into both those camps, but it’s like, how do you talk to someone and create that curiosity to let them feel like they’re heard? And then you create that connection and then that’s progress.

The Value Chain Innovation Programme and finding the value-add.

BG: Now, you’ve had a more recent Rural Leaders experience. You were on the Value Chain Innovation Programme this year. What was that all about?

EC: Yeah. So my lane, probably, in the past year has been a lot around the environmental stuff – freshwater, irrigation. But as a sheep and beef farmer, we are doing so much behind the farm gate in terms of how we farm and environmental gains on-farm. For us, because we are main point of production is lamb and finishing lambs, we’ve seen a lot of disruption within the supply chain over the past few years, especially since COVID.

Then we had another one more recently this year, where some of the guys we’ve worked really closely with over the past few years to develop our lamb supply programme. We went to them eight years ago, probably a little bit frustrated at the time, we wanted to supply a product that worked with our lamb, our supply chain, and what was actually needed within that, so we could add more value.

So they came back to us. We said to them, ‘how can we better support what you’re trying to do so we can add value to what we’re trying to do?’ They came back and they said, we need to know when your lambs are coming three to four months ahead. We need all year-round supply, and we need to have a consistent hook weight. And we went ‘righto’ and took that away. Then over the next few years, we worked really hard to actually schedule three to four months out and supply 11 to 12 months of the year and build a system around that, but then also target those specific hook rates and get it right. So, it worked really well.

Then when we had a bit of disruption within our meat company, probably three or four months ago, it blew a bit of that away. It blew away those trusted relationships, and it’s a bit of an ‘aha’ moment for me, and I realised how vulnerable we are to what happens in that supply chain and what we do. Because when your main part of your business is producing lambs and something happens in the supply chain, that’s a big issue.

I’d looked at the Value Chain Innovation Programme last year and I thought it was probably not really in my lane. And then I was like, well, actually, it really is in my lane, because if we’re doing all this other environmental stuff and trying to add value on-farm, we need a supply chain that actually supports what we’re trying to do.

So we, as farmers with our increasing costs, our sheep and beef farmers, especially the catchment limits that you’re trying to farm within, you can’t just produce your way out of it anymore. So, the real important thing that I’m seeing is, how can we value-add?

I applied for the Value Chain Innovation Programme with Hamish (Gow) and Phil (Morrison) to look at all the different value chain examples through the North Island. We got on a bus in Auckland and went down to Hamilton, explored the Fonterra markets with the Fonterra value chain around there, going to a dairy farm and then into the Fonterra factory, and also looking at LIC and DairyNZ and how those operations also support the dairy industry.

Then we investigated kiwifruit, and we also went to Robotics Plus in Tauranga. That was pretty amazing, seeing some of the tech that and the robots that they can pull in to support different production systems.

From there, we went down to Taupo and went to Pamu, and also sheep and beef there. I’m probably missing one, but over to Hawkes Bay to look at the apples as well, and also First Light Foods and a couple of others in there, just investigating what all these systems are trying to target. From there, I figured out that we are…yeah, I feel like we are lacking a little bit in leadership to support innovating the value chain to create value for what we do.

A lot of us are also limited in the land use change that we can actually do to add value. So it’s really important to me to start thinking about how we do add value through the supply chain.

BG: It seems to be like the Holy Grail. A lot of the feedback I get at the newspaper about various regulations and environmental and sustainable goals, people just go, well, we were promised it was value-add, and we’re not seeing it. We’re still slave to the schedule, that sort of thing. And so that’s a real hard nut to crack.

EC: And it’s never going to be easy. People will probably listen and say, she’s crazy. You can’t do that. But what options do we actually have in some cases? It’s like saying, well, okay, it’s hard, but what else are we going to do? Because in New Zealand, we’re actually not… I don’t know, we’re passionate about what we do, we have an amazing industry in sheep and beef.

I guess the other thing is we’ve also…when I think about, I’m very much Ag right through my life. Everything that I see as sheep and beef farmer supports what I can do behind the farm gate and creating efficiencies within the farm gate. There’s not a lot that actually looks at how we create value through the supply chain.

So I think that was probably a bit of an ‘aha’ for me throughout the (Value Chain Programme) trip, is actually realising that, yeah, we are actually stuck. There’s been amazing work done, but it’s like, how do we realise that, yes, a lot of what we do, even with our industry bodies, is focused on production, and behind the farm gate, but there’s not a lot on added value.

BG: Well, the cool thing is, I guess, that the product is amazing already, so it’s a good launching pad.

EC: Yeah, 100 %

BG: It sounds like your experience with Rural Leaders has been pretty rewarding. Is that something you’d recommend to others.

EC: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know where we would be in New Zealand’s primary sector without Rural Leaders – there’s some great options of different programmes you can get involved with, and there’s always stuff to learn. I think even if I went back and did either of those courses again, you’d still pick up something new.

The people you meet along the way as well and I guess the networks. And I guess when I’m thinking about something and I know I don’t know the answer from those networks, I have a fairly good idea that I will know someone that will. And if they don’t, they’ll know someone that will. It’s a small, small place, the New Zealand primary sector, and there’s a lot of power and networks as well.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT, and FoodHQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

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Episode Transcript

Background and the journey to winemaking.

The wine industry context.

On Kellogg.

Kellogg research into glass sustainability.

Kellogg leadership skills and being anchored in your values.

Episode Transcript

A diverse Waikato beef farm.

Kellogg research into carbon credits.

Catchment groups.

Reflecting on Kellogg.

Episode Transcript

On Rural Leaders and Kellogg.

On potential.

On productive discussion and debate.

On Rural Leaders’ recent history.

On collaboration.

On alumni and their research.

Episode Transcript

A partnership to develop stronger connections with farmers.

Knowledge, confidence and connection in agriculture.

What to expect from the Engage Programme.

Looking at the whole farming system.

Looking closer at the Engage Programme.

Episode Transcript

A diverse background in and out of food and fibre.

Why do the Value Chain Innovation Programme?

What happens on the Value Chain Innovation Programme?

Understanding value chains.

Think differently. Get inspired.

Episode Transcript

Family Farm Background and Evolution

Career Path and International Experience

Kellogg Research Focus: The Future of Arable Farming

Farmer Perspectives: Looking 25-50 Years Ahead

Key Recommendations: Integration and Collaboration

The Challenge of Farm Independence Culture

Personal Leadership Development Through Kellogg

The Need for Disruption and Adaptation

Recommendation for the Kellogg Programme

CountryWide Podcast Transcript

The Four Value Chains

Target Participants

Core Learning Framework

Intellectual Property Insights

Rethinking Value Creation

Global Market Reality

Preparation for International Engagement

Mental Models for Analysis

Programme Success Stories

Organisational Alignment

Learning Environment

Programme Details and Networking

Episode Transcript

Farming to suit your environment.

Seeing the world before farming.

Building knowledge and leadership skills.

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme experience.

Lamb and ewe mortality, leadership, and learning.

Federated Farmers Meat and Wool Chair and further study.

Putting leadership development into practice.