Alumni in the Spotlight – Lisa Portas, Dani Darke, Caroline Batley, Nathan Guy, and more.

Here are just a few of the media pieces covering the impact of Rural Leaders’ Programme Alumni in industries and communities across the sector.

Caroline Batley

Caroline Batley (Kellogg 2022)

Caroline Batley recently completed two years as a Trustee of the Waikato Farmers Trust. In 2025 Caroline was also appointed the new Chairperson of the St Peter’s Owl Farm Governance Committee.

Nathan Guy

Nathan Guy (Kellogg 1999) was appointed Special Agricultural Trade Envoy (SATE) late last year. He replaces Hamish Marr (2019 Nuffield Scholar) in the role.

He featured in a recent Rural News article in his capacity as SATE, saying the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with India is a good deal for the country.

You can read the full article here.

Lisa Portas

Lisa Portas (Nuffield 2025, Kellogg 2019) has become Associate Trustee AGMARDT, replacing Phil Weir (2020 Nuffield Scholar).

Wairarapa-based, Lisa has over a decade of experience working in agriculture, rural businesses and supply chains in New Zealand and internationally.

Take a read of this Farmers Weekly article on Lisa and the AGMARDT appointment.

Dani Darke

Dani Darke (2025 Nuffield Scholar) and her husband Anthony recently spoke at B+LNZ Tasman Farming for Profit Field Day. They are sheep and beef farmers from the King County, farming Coopworth ewes and Fresian bulls.

Dani is a director for Ballance Agri-Nutrients and is currently finishing off a Nuffield Scholarship with a focus on how we sell our beef to the world. Dani is passionate about rural communities and is interested in making our farms more profitable and our communities stronger.

Michael Tayler

Michael Tayler (2012 Nuffield Scholar) currently serves as chair of United Wheatgrowers New Zealand. Based in Christchurch, the organisation manages grower levies, insurance schemes, and industry representation.

Michael featured in a Farmers Weekly article in January (and on TVNZ) about hail-affected cropping farmers counting losses in the millions after a series of extreme hail events, the worst recorded by United Wheatgrowers.

Three major hail events hit Canterbury farmers over the Christmas and New Year period, stripping crops. Michael said on average one hail event would affect 300 to 400 hectares. But from these events, 71 claims had been made accounting for almost 5,000ha of wheat.

Take a read of last month’s article here.

Kate Scott

Kate Scott (2018 Nuffield Scholar), Rural Leaders’ Chair and HortNZ CEO, appeared in Hort News recently. Kate reflected on the achievements the sector has seen over the last year, especially apples and kiwifruit.

Regarding apple exports pushing past the billion dollar mark, Kate says, “I think that is testament to apple growers, particularly if they have been recovering from the effects of Cyclone Gabrielle,” she says.

Take a read of the full article here.

Kylie Leonard

Kylie Leonard (2023 Nuffield Scholar) appeared in Farmers weekly recently. Kylie’s Nuffield research explored the effects of ESG on farm finance and this was central to the article.

Kylie travelled widely on her Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarship, and gained new perspectives on farming systems, ESG and the role farmers play in strong, resilient communities.

Take a read of the full Farmers Weekly article here.

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

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 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

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.

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.

Hamish Murray podcast - Building stronger on-farm teams

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

What’s top of mind for Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme Scholars?

Rural Leaders, in partnership with PwC New Zealand, piloted Future Food and Fibre Leaders Pulse Check with Kellogg Programme One early in 2025.

Pulse Check is a snapshot of what’s top of mind for Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme Scholars, captured through workshops facilitated by PwC and Rural Leaders.

The second Pulse Check with Kellogg Programme Two 2025, captured five key messages.

Here are two:

Adapt and lead through changing times
Be empowered to redefine success

Click here to discover more in the short report.

Thank you to PwC, and to our Strategic and Programme Partners for their ongoing support of the Kellogg Programme and our shared mission to grow leadership in the food and fibre sector.

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

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 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.

Kellogg Programme Two (K54) 2025 graduate.

After six months, 19 in-person days, delivered across three phases, K54 Kellogg Programme Two 2025, have completed their individual research reports and have graduated.

Congratulations Kellogg Programme Two 2025

Rural Leaders are pleased to share the latest reports from the graduates of Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme Two 2025 (K54).

Over the last six months the graduates have grown as people and as leaders. A large part of this growth has come from a deep dive into a research topic of interest to them and of value to the sector.

Congratulations to all of the Scholars. Anna Vaughan, Matt Scarf, Tara Dwyer, Tim Orlando-Reep, Natasha Cave, David March, Tim Waehling, Bryan Gibson, Nick Vernon, Nicky Halley, Zac Howell, Pranoy Pal, Geoff Crawford, Olivia Smith, Campbell Smith.

The reports covers such topics as: Biodiversity credit for sheep and beef farmers, news with value, genotyping the NZ sheep flock, wearables, dairy social license, data interoperability, and competition vs collaboration.

You can read K54’s reports here

The design and delivery of the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme is only possible through the generous and ongoing support of our investing partners:

Strategic Partners: DairyNZ,AGMARDT (The Agricultural and Marketing Research and Development Trust),Mackenzie Charitable Foundation,FMG (Farmers Mutual Group).

Programme Partners: Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI),Farmlands Co-operative Society Limited,Horticulture New Zealand,Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC),Zespri International,Rabobank New Zealand,Beef + Lamb New Zealand.

Media Partners: CountryWide Media, Farmers Weekly NZ

Professional Partners: PwC, Tavendales, Federated Farmers

Alumni in the Spotlight – Geoffrey Neilson, Dan Steele, Emma Crutchley, Conan Moynihan, Dan Eb and more.

Here are just a few of the media pieces covering the impact of Rural Leaders’ Programme Alumni in industries and communities across the sector.

Geoffrey Neilson

Geoffrey (Geoff) Neilson (Nuffield 1976)

Southern farmers Geoff and Ailsa Neilson are being celebrated for opening their home and the minds of scores of Welsh visitors. ODT’s Shawn McAvinue talks to Mr Neilson about his family hosting more than 100 Welsh students on their sheep and beef farm and his wife being his greatest mentor.

Take a read of this ODT article about an extraordinary couple, and a Nuffield alum who is the embodiment of the Nuffield spirit.

Emma Crutchley, Jon Pemberton

Emma Crutchley (Kellogg 2018, Value Chain 2023), Jon Pemberton (Nuffield 2025), ‘Farm without Harm’ video.

Otago sheep and beef farmer Emma Crutchley (2018 Kellogg Scholar, 2023 Value Chain) and Jon Pemberton (2025 Nuffield Scholar) feature in a ‘farm without harm’ campaign (Safer Farms/ACC).

The campaign leads with videos sharing practical tips designed to help farmers to make small changes to the way they might do things. Ultimately, the work aims to reduce on-farm injury by suggesting a pause before you act; ACC’s familiar ‘hmmm’ ad platform.

If you haven’t seen these clips already, check out one here.

Dan Steele

Dan Steele (Nuffield 2015, Value Chain 2023)

Blue Duck Station owner Dan Steele NZ and wife Sandy recently won the tourism environment category at the New Zealand Tourism Awards.

Blue Duck Station, is a working beef and sheep farm and eco-tourism destination in Whanganui National Park.

“We’re really hoping that this becomes more mainstream, for more businesses to do more conservation work and pay their rent to NZ for looking after our natural capital,” said Dan.

Congratulations to Dan, family, and the Blue Duck Station team. Take a read of a Whanganui Chronicle article here.

Dan Eb

Dan Eb (Nuffield 2021)

In his semi-regular crafting of articles for Farmers Weekly’s ‘Eating the Elephant column, Dan asserts that Pirates were actually the pioneers of modern Human Resources and workplace culture.

“Despite working in a context of high seas thievery and murder, they built flat, high-performing organisations based on trust, transparency and teamwork that outdo many modern teams and companies.”

Dan offers a few pirate myths this idea busts and lessons it offers for us modern folk. Take a read of the article here.

Conan Moynihan, Phoebe Scherer, Reuben Carter, Dr Jordi Hoult, Daniel Judd

The following alumni featured in the latest issue of CountryWide magazine. To access the Virtual Magazine, you need to be a subscriber and be logged in to the site.

Log in here or choose your subscription here: 12-month CountryWide Digital Only Subscription. OR purchase a copy for delivery

Conan Moynihan (Kellogg 2022), CountryWide Magazine, Page 24.
Conan ‘Force of Nature Consulting’, is helping farmers find the sweet spot between environmental and economic sustainability. Conan believes that the future of farming must remain rooted in tradition and in transformation too.

Phoebe Scherer, Reuben Carter (HortNZ Leadership Programme 2025 and 2024 respectively)
On Page 82 and 83 an article ‘Nurturing the next generation’ offers a timely dive into the future of leadership in the horticulture sector. Horticulture New Zealand celebrates 20 years this year.

Bay of Plenty grower and 2025 Young Grower of the Year, Phoebe Scherer and Reuben Carter, along with Kate Scott, CEO HortNZ, offer comment on leadership in the sector.

Dr. Jordi Hoult (Kellogg 2024), CountryWide Magazine, Page 80.
Jordi graduated Kellogg after presenting her research ‘Empowering the missing middle in leadership’. The report asserts that 30-50 years old farmers and rural professionals are missing from the leadership conversation.

On her research Jordi says, “Despite the wealth of experience many in this group possess, traditional leadership development pathways tend to focus on younger individuals, leaving mid-career professionals without the resources they need to continue growing.”

Daniel Judd (Kellogg 2025), CountryWide Magazine, Page 58.
Daniel’s excellent Kellogg report, ‘The soils gap: interactions between science, commerce and culture, is explored on page 58 and 59 of the magazine. Daniel’s report and the article explore the drivers behind conventional and regenerative farming practices and seeks to reduce the barriers that seperate the two approaches.

NZRLT (Rural Leaders) Leadership update.

After nearly nine years with Rural Leaders, including the last two and a half years as Chief Executive Officer, Lisa Rogers has decided the time is right to move on from her role, effective 9 January 2026.

During her time with the Trust, Lisa has made a significant and lasting contribution. She has led Rural Leaders through several major projects and periods of change, and now feels the time is right for someone new to build on this work and continue to advance the Trust.

While the Board is saddened by Lisa’s decision to move on, it fully supports her choice and is confident that her influence on Rural Leaders and rural leadership will continue well beyond her tenure with the organisation.

The Board will begin a recruitment process in the new year. Over the coming weeks, we will also work with the Rural Leaders’ team to ensure the continued delivery of our programmes.

The Board is very confident in the teams’ ability to continue to deliver to the high standard they are known for during this period of change.

If you would like to discuss this announcement further, please feel free to get in touch at Kate@landpro.co.nz

Kind regards,
Kate Scott
Board Chair, NZ Rural Leadership Trust

Dr. Victoria Westbrooke – Connecting agribusiness and policy professionals with farming.

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.

Here are just a few of the media pieces covering the impact of Rural Leaders’ Programme Alumni in industries and communities across the sector.

Clare Bradley, Jared Clarke, Kelly Heckler, Tracey Perkins, 2026 Nuffield Scholars

The four new Nuffield Scholars received their awards in Parliament on 4 November.
From Canterbury, Otago and the Bay of Plenty, and representing industries including dairy, sheep and beef and aquaculture, they join 193 Nuffield New Zealand alumni and over 2000 international alumni.

Coverage in the news includes:

Erica van Reenen, 2012 Kellogg Scholar

Erica van Reenen featured on REX (Rural Exchange) recently. Erica is the 2025 Rural Professional of the Year and AgFirst Chair. Erica spoke about her time working in government policy at the intersection of the Clarke and Key tenures. And she spoke about the lessons she learned and her time as a Kellogg Scholar. Listen to the podcast episode here.

Dr Jordi Hoult, 2024 Kellogg Scholar

Dr Jordi Hoult, discusses drawing on her Kellogg research and experience in New Zealand’s food and fibre sector with Sarah Perriam-Lampp on the CountryWide podcast. Jordi explores how to empower mid-career professionals often overlooked in leadership. She identifies her Kellogg research “the missing middle” and highlights mentorship and flexible development as key to helping people in their 30s–50s thrive and shape the sector’s future.

Listen to the podcast episode here.

Renée Walker joins the Rural Leaders team.

The New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders) is pleased to announce the appointment of Renée Walker as Kellogg Programme Facilitator. Renée will join Kellogg Programme One 2026.

For Renée Walker, Rural Leaders’ newly appointed Kellogg Programme facilitator, leadership has always been about people – seeing them, understanding them, and helping them unlock their own potential.

A former Chief Operating Officer and senior executive with more than 20 years’ experience leading teams through transformation and culture-building, Renée has built a career defined by involvement, visibility, and genuine connection. She has led through complexity – notably during Canterbury’s post-earthquake recovery -and brings deep experience in strategy, change leadership, and executive-level coaching.

Today, Renée is the director of The Leadership Revolutionist and Thrive For Life, working across New Zealand to equip leaders – from senior executives to Year 13 students – with the confidence, mindset, and capability to lead with heart and courage. She is known for her high-energy facilitation style, practical frameworks, and ability to create space for honest reflection and meaningful change. Her facilitation work spans boardrooms, classrooms, and conference stages, including leadership programmes, culture workshops, and Extended DISC and NLP-based development experiences.

From two large North Otago farming families, Renée’s connection to the rural sector runs deep. “It’s not just the backbone of New Zealand,” Renée reflects. “It is New Zealand. The rural sector is who we are.” With generations of family farming behind her, she understands the culture, values and pressures of rural life – and the pride that goes with it.

That rural pride led to working with Alliance Group – New Zealand’s only 100% farmer-owned red meat cooperative at the time – working in a role supporting and advocating for farmers. “My family have always been Alliance shareholders and suppliers,” Renée explains. “It felt important to be part of something that represents farmers so directly.”

Renée’s leadership journey began with a childhood dream of teaching, inspired by a grandmother who taught in small rural schools. “I thought you could only change lives by being a teacher,” Renée says. “But I realised leadership can do that too, being the person who sees others and helps them grow.”

Her career has spanned marketing, communications, insurance, and government relations, including her role as Deputy Chief Executive at EQC. “I’ve never been defined by a title,” Renée insists. “I don’t claim to be the smartest or the most technical person in the room, but I get people, and that’s been my greatest strength.”

Her work now focuses on culture, capability, and future-ready leadership – areas she believes are essential in a rural sector navigating generational change. “Young people don’t want hierarchy – they want autonomy, influence, and choice. That shift can be confronting… but also incredibly exciting for the sector.”

As the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme Facilitator, Renée hopes to foster “…more diversity of voice…” in the sector. “We need different ways of thinking at the table,” Renée says. “Leadership is about helping people have an informed voice, especially as governments’ views of the rural sector can change.”

Outside work, Renée describes life as “integrated rather than balanced.” She balances time with her 13 year old son, and large extended family with community and board roles. Renée serves on the boards of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra and the Riccarton Rotary Youth Trust, is a registered Marriage Celebrant, and an active supporter of several charities.

“I’m not known for relaxing…one of my key values is curiosity – I believe the more curious you are and the more you do, the more interesting and connected you become. That’s how you can really help others.”

Renée joins Kellogg Programme One 2026, which starts 27 January in Lincoln.

2026 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholars announced.

Last night (Tues 4 Nov) at Parliament, in front of Rural Leaders’ investing partners and political and industry leaders, Hon. Minister Todd McClay awarded the 2026 Nuffield Scholarships to four new leaders.

Nuffield Farming Scholarships have been awarded to New Zealand’s Primary Industries leaders for 75 years.

With a global network of more than 2,000 alumni, 197 of these from New Zealand, Nuffield continues to help build rural leadership capability and Food and Fibre NZ’s global profile.

Last night at Parliament, in front of Rural Leaders’ investing partners and political and industry leaders, Hon. Minister Todd McClay awarded the 2026 Nuffield Scholarships to four new leaders.

The 2026 scholars represent three regions and several industries including dairy, aquaculture, and red meat.

The cohort will undertake a Rural Leaders delivered programme that offers a life-changing opportunity for travel, study of the latest agriculture innovations and an introduction to decision-makers around the world.

The new scholars were announced by Minister McClay as: Clare Bradley, a Bay of Plenty Aquaculturalist, Jared Clarke, a Canterbury Farmer, Kelly Heckler, an Otago Farmer, and Tracey Perkins, a Canterbury Farmer. They are the 194^th, 195^th, 196^th and 197^th New Zealand scholars respectively.

“Clare, Jared, Kelly and Tracey have shown they value giving back to community and industry, they display innovative approaches to their work, and they have demonstrated a track record of meeting challenges head on.

Ultimately, they are now tasked with finding those deep insights that will create lasting benefit for New Zealand food and fibre, their industries and their communities,” said Kate Scott, Rural Leaders and Nuffield NZ Chair.

Lisa Rogers, Rural Leaders’ CEO added, “Clare, Jared, Kelly and Tracey have each exhibited the characteristics that embody a Nuffield Scholar and ambassador for NZ Food and Fibre.”

Introducing the 2026 Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholars.

Clare Bradley, CEO AgriSea, Bay of Plenty
Clare Bradley is based in Paeroa with her children and husband AgriSea Chief Innovation Officer, Tane. Clare, CEO, leads a 30-strong team pioneering seaweed-based bio-stimulants, animal health supplements, and high-value hydrogels for agriculture and biotechnology.

Clare is a leading advocate for the sustainable growth of Aotearoa’s seaweed sector. Guided by appreciation & respect for the marine environment, Clare has championed innovation that protects New Zealand’s underwater forests while creating economic, environmental, and cultural value.

As the founding Chair of the Aotearoa New Zealand Seaweed Association, and Rere ki Uta, Rere ki tai, Clare is driving collaboration between Western science and Mātauranga Māori to build a trusted, sustainable sector.

Under her leadership, AgriSea promotes local empowerment, zero-waste production, and circular economy principles. Known for her environmental vision, Clare continues to shape New Zealand’s emerging blue economy, turning the country’s rich marine biodiversity into a model of innovation and guardianship.

Clare’s Nuffield research is likely to explore the economic, environmental, and logistical viability of smaller, decentralised processing hubs and whether they can create local jobs, strengthen value chains, and enhance commercial resilience.

Jared Clarke, Farmer, Canterbury (John Hopkins Scholarship Award Winner)
Jared Clarke is a Canterbury dairy farmer with a strong record of performance, innovation and team development. A Lincoln University B.Ag.Sci (Hons) graduate.

From 2017 to 2022, Jared and his wife Victoria operated Two Rivers Ltd, a 50/50 sharemilking business milking 2,000 cows. In 2022, they formed an equity partnership and purchased Mount Rivers Ltd, a 1,000-cow irrigated dairy farm supplying A2 milk to Synlait. Under their leadership, the business has delivered high returns, sustainability initiatives and strong team retention.

Jared believes that “turning sunlight into food is a noble task.” Known for his ability to ignore constraints, he enjoys helping fellow farmers where he can on performance, people and innovation.

Off-farm, Jared’s governance work includes director of Barrhill Chertsey Ltd, a member of the Canterbury Farm Business Group, and a former member of LIC’s Shareholder Reference Group.

Interested (and passionate) about the potential for a reduced reliance on imported energy, both on-farm and at a national level, Jared’s Nuffield research is likely to be on the generation and storage of energy.

Kelly Heckler, Farmer, Community Leader, Central Otago
Kelly Heckler and her family farm Lauder Creek, a high-country sheep and beef property in the Manuherekia catchment of Central Otago.

Kelly is a values-driven leader and advocate for sustainable food and fibre production, recognised for her commitment to intergenerational resilience in New Zealand’s primary industries.

As chairperson of Otago Water Resource Users Group, Kelly led the organisation through a major transformation, restructuring it into a formal incorporated society to improve accountability and adaptability. “Real impact doesn’t always come with grand gestures … it’s often about steady progress behind the scenes,” says Kelly.

Kelly’s leadership philosophy centres on authenticity and collaboration. Her experience navigating policy reform and community engagement has deepened her understanding of the challenges facing rural New Zealand.

Kelly aims to build a resilient, intergenerational farming business and advance innovative farm-planning solutions that support people and environment. She sees the future of agriculture as one built on integrity, communication, and shared purpose. “When we bring people together behind a common vision, we can shape a thriving, sustainable future for generations to come,” added Kelly.

Kelly is exploring research in Freshwater Management with specific focus on water allocation in overallocated catchments.

Tracey Perkins – Farmer, Sustainable Land and Water Management Advisor, Founder of AgriThrive

Tracey Perkins is a Canterbury-based dairy farmer, facilitator, and sustainable land and water management advisor who combines hands-on agricultural experience with a deep commitment to helping rural communities thrive.

Living in Darfield on a 1050-cow dairy farm with her partner Jonny and their three children, Tracey balances family life with leadership in sustainable land use and rural development.

Of Ngā Puhi and Raukawa descent, Tracey brings both cultural grounding and practical expertise to her work.

As the Founder and Lead Facilitator of AgriThrive, she is the only agricultural facilitator in New Zealand using a trauma-informed, farmer-to-farmer approach. A graduate of the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, she has over a decade of professional experience in biosecurity and environmental sustainability.

Tracey’s achievements include forming and guiding numerous Canterbury catchment and community groups, leading successful teams, and recently serving as Campaign Manager for Selwyn Mayor Lydia Gliddon.

She is passionate about empowering people to build resilient, solutions-focused communities. Whether through AgriThrive, local schools, or industry leadership, she champions collaboration, sustainability, and the belief that lasting change starts with people.

Tracey intends to explore “The Third Model,” an approach integrating Indigenous stewardship principles with the operational and economic realities of intensive agriculture to create a sustainable foundation for New Zealand’s future.

Congratulations to the four 2026 Nuffield scholars.

For more information about the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships,
go to https://ruralleaders.co.nz/nuffield

Fresh from their award night, our Nuffield Scholars featured in a RNZ interview, listen here:

Richard Green – time to think differently about our food and fibre value chains.

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.

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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

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

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

The New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders) is pleased to announce the renewal of their Strategic Partnership agreement with FMG.

Rural Leaders and Strategic Partner FMG, have renewed their partnership agreement, reinforcing a shared commitment to lifting leadership capability and to building stronger rural communities.

The new agreement formalises the continued alignment of values and support for Rural Leaders’ mission to develop capable industry leaders who, in turn, strengthen the communities they represent.

As a Mutual, FMG takes a long-term view – building long-term connections with rural New Zealand and reinvesting to help build strong and prosperous rural communities. FMG sponsors over 700 local events each year, from smaller lamb and calf days right up to National Field Days, and the FMG Young Farmer of the Year contest.

The renewal of the FMG-Rural Leaders partnership, alongside a long-standing relationship with Rural Leaders’ Programme Partner Farmlands, exemplifies this focus.

”FMG has been supporting farmers and growers for over 120 years now, and we’re committed to supporting the generations to come. It is a privilege to partner with Rural Leaders and support the future of farming in New Zealand Aotearoa. No doubt, our rural leaders will continue to challenge the status quo, team up to pool resources, share knowledge and capability as they have throughout our country’s history,” said Pete Frizzell, Chief Marketing Officer, FMG.

With FMG’s support, Rural Leaders’ programmes will continue to develop confident, skilled leaders equipped to tackle the challenges and opportunities facing their communities, industries, and the Food and Fibre sector.

“The partnership’s impact is evident in the transformative growth of our programme alumni, who consistently demonstrate enhanced leadership ability, show great resilience, and are better equipped to drive change”, said Lisa Rogers, CEO, Rural Leaders.

FMG also fosters leadership development internally, with employees regularly attending the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme.

FMG has been a Strategic Partner of Rural Leaders since the Trust’s formation in 2017.

(Pictured – Pete Frizzell, Chief Marketing Officer at FMG, and Lisa Rogers, CEO Rural Leaders).

MyLead – Supporting stronger leadership in Food and Fibre.

MyLead: Supporting stronger Leadership in Food and Fibre.

A closer look at MyLead’s leadership stage outcomes and the industry stories that bring these to life.

MyLead.co.nz helps individuals at all stages of their leadership journey identify tailored development pathways to support their personal and professional growth.

MyLead marks a step toward a more coordinated and impactful approach to developing our sector’s most important asset – our people.

Research commissioned by Food and Fibre Centre of Vocational Excellence and led by Rural Leaders provides a leadership framework. The site brings this framework to life with an ecosystem of leadership programmes along with leadership outcomes by stage, supported by real industry stories.

The outcomes and stories vary depending on both the stage and industry selections users make on the site, making it a personalised experience.

What follows is an opportunity to review all of the leadership outcomes from the framework and their supporting stories.

These have been categorised, as they would be on MyLead, under the three leadership stages: leading self, leading others, leading strategy.

Leading self (team member/team leader)

Those at the Leading Self stage are focused on planning and executing tasks to achieve organisational or team objectives.

Leaders build trust

Relationships are founded on trust. It is also the oxygen that leadership breathes. How leaders behave builds or destroys trust. Without trust, suspicion, misunderstandings, failing relationships, and toxic workplaces quickly follow.

Story from the Sector

Leaders have empathy

To learn and understand others, we must demonstrate empathy. This is the ability to see and understand someone else’s perspective without judging it, or them… Demonstrating a genuine care and empathy for the team was frequently cited as a core attribute of what kaimahi (workers) in the sector wanted from their leaders.

Story from the Sector

Leaders are resilient

As a concept, resilience refers to the ability to endure and absorb the shocks of the world and recover from adversity… The good news is it is a learnable skill. For example, leaders can practice focusing on what they can control, taking charge of their thoughts, and adopting helpful habits.

Story from the Sector

Leaders are curious

Curiosity is a hunger to learn and grow further… The best leaders are not just curious about those things that directly relate to them, but they are also curious about what is happening beyond their immediate environment and how they might be able to adapt ideas from elsewhere.

Story from the Sector

Leaders understand their reputation

As leaders, we need to understand our reputation. Asking for 360-degree feedback can be very useful here (and potentially very confronting). How do other people see us? And does this reflect who we believe we are?

Story from the Sector

Leaders are in tune with their feelings

We lead people when we move them emotionally. So as leaders, we need to understand how emotions work, how they impact our thinking, affect our physical bodies, and how they spread between people.

Story from the Sector

Leaders understand their own drivers and values

As the leader, we are our first team member. So, leading ourselves is our first leadership responsibility. Knowing ourselves is a big ask, because it means exploring what it is that makes us tick—to differentiate between things that give us strength and those that cause grief.

Story from the Sector

Leading others (manager/general manager)

Those at the Leading Others stage bridge strategy and action by organising and systemising for success.

Leaders hold people to account

Leadership involves taking accountability for the behaviours and performance of the team while having the courage to share responsibility and authority with them.

Story from the Sector

Leaders delegate authority

As the leader, we are accountable for the results and wellness of our team. A leader’s accountability cannot be divided or delegated, but our authority and responsibilities can and should be… It takes courage to let go and let others act for us, knowing they may do it differently to us.

Story from the Sector

Leaders make effective decisions

Effective leadership is not a popularity contest. Leadership comes with scars. This is because a leader’s calling is to change-up (or adapt) the game rather than optimise the current game. To change with the times, the sector needs leaders with the courage of their convictions.

Story from the Sector

Leaders invest in people’s growth

As leaders we grow people, and our people grow the Food and Fibre our nation relies on. When we invest in our people, we invest in our business, not least because our people make decisions every day that have a material impact on the purpose or profit of our organisation.

Story from the Sector

Leaders deal with status and power

Leadership roles typically come with status and power which, to the unprepared, can be intoxicating. Leaders who put their own interests first, or who start thinking their elevated position equates to importance, set a rot in action that will ultimately undermine themselves and the results they seek to create.

Story from the Sector

Leaders serve something greater than themselves

Truly leading well is an act of service. Our role as the leader, is to serve the collective, not ourselves… An ethos of service works by unlocking one of leadership’s paradoxes (to lead we must serve). Leaders who serve, harness the reciprocal energy of the collective group or team.

Story from the Sector

Leaders make one-to-one connections

Leaders build a bridge between themselves and other people. To do this, leaders build trust, get alongside their people, and do more than just communicate— they connect. At its best, connecting is akin to creating a sense of family, this is the Māori value of whakawhanaungatanga.

Story from the Sector

Leaders know and understand others

As leaders, in addition to knowing ourselves we need to know others. To know others, we must seek to understand them. The things we seek to learn about ourselves (personality, thinking style, emotions, and resilience) are the same things we need to be curious about in seeking to know others.

Story from the Sector

Leading strategy (executive/director)

Those at the Leading Strategy stage focus on articulating the vision, generating value and creating competitive advantage.

Leaders energise the team

Energy is the wellspring of true leadership. When we are truly leading, the alignment of our whole self with meaningful purpose energises us and others are drawn to it. Finding what energises us and what feels true, is leadership’s X-factor. This is when the magic happens.

Story from the Sector

Leaders connect the team to an organisational purpose

People need to know that what they do matters. Leaders ensure their people understand how their task is important to the bigger picture. People simply want to know why they’re doing a task; this is what makes it meaningful.

Story from the Sector

Leaders create an environment where team members have autonomy over their timing and place of work

Flexible working practices should, as the name says, be flexible. It is unrealistic to think we can apply flexible working practices universally across an organisation. The goal is to apply them where possible. Organisations that embrace flexibility will maximise the pool of talent they can recruit from.

Story from the Sector

Leaders create an environment where team members have the autonomy to determine how best to conduct their tasks

People don’t want to be micromanaged. To give our people more autonomy, we need to focus more on the outputs we want them to achieve, and less on their inputs (methods, hours, and location required to deliver those outputs). In the end, it is as simple as giving people choice.

Story from the Sector

Leaders role model belonging

As leaders, we must create an environment where all our people feel they truly belong. This includes us. If we are brave enough to be authentic, we show our team members that it is safe for them to be authentic too.

Story from the Sector

Leaders create an environment where all team members feel safe to be their full and authentic selves

Leaders create an environment where everyone in their team can bring their whole, authentic, unique self to work and feel truly valued and included.

Story from the Sector

Generate your own leadership development pathway

Visit MyLead.co.nz

Shannon Harnett – Making AI work for you

Shannon is a 2020 Nuffield Scholar, Director and Co-Owner of Rural Accountants and has investments in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture businesses. In this article Shannon shares her insights into how to make AI work well for you.

Making AI Work for You
The first time I saw ChatGPT in action was in the summer of 2023, at a friend’s house. We asked it to write a poem about accountants. It was hilarious — but underneath the humour, I realised the potential.

Very quickly, AI became my assistant. At first, it fixed grammar and spelling in emails and reports. My writing became sharper, more concise, and easier to read with far less grammar and spelling mistakes! Mark Twain once said, “If I had more time, I would have written less.” With AI, that constraint no longer applies.

The real turning point, though, was when I used AI to turn something messy into something structured and useful. Not “robots taking over the world.” Just getting the AI to ask me questions, one by one, about a project I was working on, then pulling my answers into a clean, usable format.

That’s when it clicked: AI isn’t just a word-smithing assistant. It’s a strategic tool. Used well, it takes work off your plate, sharpens your thinking, and creates scale without the hours of refining.

It Starts with the Question
The biggest lesson? It’s not about having the right answer. It’s about asking the right question.

I now frame prompts like I’m briefing a new hire: clear role, clear context, clear task. For example, as a CEO, I don’t just type, “Help me with strategy.” That’s far too broad. Instead, I say:

“You are my Scaling Up Strategy Assistant. Ask me one question at a time. Start with People, then Strategy, then Execution, then Cash, then Risks & Opportunities. Only show me the full summary once we’ve covered all five areas.”

The result is an interactive interview where AI does the admin while I do the thinking. That’s the power of a good prompt: it forces clarity, and the output is miles better than a vague question ever delivers. And, in truth, learning to prompt AI has made me a better leader — clearer, more structured, and more intentional in what I ask of others.

Small Steps, Big Wins
You don’t need to overhaul your whole business to start. Try it on something small, try it on something creative.

Don’t know what to have for dinner? Take a photo of what’s in the fridge, upload it to AI, and it’ll generate recipes with step-by-step instructions.

It sounds trivial, but it proves the point: AI can sift through messy inputs, structure them, and give you something useful in seconds. In business, the same applies — pulling data from multiple reports, tidying client communications, or drafting meeting notes. These aren’t tasks we can’t do. They’re tasks that chew through time — and AI gives that time back.

The Power of Projects
The real magic happens when you start treating AI as a project partner. I’ve been experimenting with GPT-powered projects that run like structured workflows — guiding me step by step, capturing the right inputs, and producing a clear, consistent output.

Here’s what that looks like:

A marketing project where AI builds a content calendar in my brand voice.
A reporting project where AI pulls numbers from my files and formats them into a tidy monthly pack.
A strategy project where AI interviews me (or my team) and distils the answers into a one-page plan.

You define the outcome, give AI the right resources (files, data, context), set simple rules, and let it guide the process. The result is structure, quality, and momentum — without false starts or bottlenecks.

And once a project is set up, anyone in the team can run it. That means clarity and consistency, whether I’m leading it or handing it over.

AI in the Tools You Already Use
AI isn’t just in chat windows. It’s already creeping into the software you use every day.

Take Microsoft Copilot. It can scan emails and Teams chats, spot an approval request (“Can I go ahead with this?”), and track it. If three days go by without a reply, it nudges the approver and updates the requester.

That alone kills the “lost in the inbox” problem that slows teams down. But it also shines at surfacing related documents inside Microsoft 365 — I’ve saved hours finding what I need.

A New Way of Leading
Here’s the mindset shift: AI isn’t just tactical. It’s strategic.

The sticky note on my desk simply says: “How can AI help me do this?”

Whether I’m writing a report, mapping a process, or planning strategy, I pause and ask where AI could take the load. Most of the time, it’s not about replacing me. It’s about clearing space so I can show up where it really matters — with clients, with strategy, with people.

How to Start Today
If you’re ready to dip your toe in, here’s a simple path:

Pick one task you repeat often (emails, stakeholder lists, client notes).
Write a clear prompt that sets role, context, and task.
Let AI break it into questions and interview you.
Use the output, tweak it, and save the prompt for next time.

Once you’ve got one win, build a small “AI toolkit” for yourself and your team — a set of prompts or projects that anyone can use.

Final Thought
AI won’t magically run your business or your life. But it will tidy the messy bits, speed up the slow bits, and track the bits you’d usually forget.

And when you start treating AI less like a novelty and more like a colleague — one that never gets tired of chasing approvals or formatting tables — you’ll see what I’ve seen: the power to do more, without burning yourself or your team out.

I completed the Spark-funded AI Mini MBA course, and it was one of the best investments of time I’ve made. If you get the opportunity, take it.

Shannon’s 2020 Nuffield report on Kiwifruit PVR’s ‘Getting Plant Varieties Right’ can be viewed here.

A Kellogg Scholar’s insight into arable’s future in Canterbury

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

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

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.

Supported by our investing partners, the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust is privileged to help grow many of our sector’s capable and purpose-driven leaders.

A key aspect of the Kellogg Programme (and the Nuffield Scholarship) is research based learning. The clarity of thought and confidence the research component of Kellogg promotes can be hugely transformative.

The Kellogg Rural Scholars Series booklets are distillations of this research – each focussing on a selection of reports covering one industry or topic.

Currently, there are five booklets in the series, with this latest issue being ‘Leadership Insights’.

Leadership Insights contains twelve reports spanning the last 7 years.

The reports in ‘Leadership Insights’ cover such topics as: Leadership During a Crisis, Emotional Intelligence, the Qualities and Characteristics of Good Leadership, and the Effect of Good Leadership on Staff Engagement and Retention.

These reports were written by scholars: Jack Dwyer, Jordi Hoult, Cheyenne Wilson, Louis Batley, Brian Henderson, Melisssa King, Henry MacIntosh, Jason Halford, Sophie Malone, Joanna Greaves, Hayden Dunne, Nick de Ridder.

You can view Leadership Insights here.

If you would like to grow as a leader; exploring research into a food and fibre topic of your choosing, apply for 2026 Kellogg Programme One by 19 October.

To learn more head here.

Kerry Worsnop shares Scholarship experience at Nuffield 75th.

Nuffield Farming Scholarships celebrated 75 years in New Zealand last Thursday.

100+ Scholars and their partners gathered for dinner, to hear from an excellent line-up of speakers and of course, chat.

Kate Scott, NZRLT Board Chair (2018 Scholar) opened and spoke on the impact of Nuffield Scholars before introducing host Hon Todd McClay.

Julian Raine (1997 Scholar) and Kerry Worsnop (2023 Scholar), spoke about their Nuffield experiences including some of the challenges overcome and unique opportunities encountered.

You can read Kerry’s speech below.

One of the most important moments of the night was an announcement by the Hopkins family.

John Hopkins,1979 Nuffield Scholar, passed in 2022. John and wife Elaine, gave generously to the Nuffield Programme over the years. This generosity included providing a Scholarship for Ben Anderson, 2021 Nuffield Scholar.

John and Elaine’s son and granddaughter, Andrew and Chelsea Hopkins, attended the dinner. Chelsea announced they would again support a Scholar onto Nuffield.

Here’s an excerpt from Chelsea’s LinkedIn post that echoes her excellent speech on the night:

“… My grandfather, John Hopkins was a 1979 Nuffield Scholar. I have fond memories of him telling me how the scholarship transformed him and the lasting impact it had on his life. I was lucky enough to share his story with the attendees last night and for this I am truly grateful.

To give back to the programme that gave us so much, we are providing a scholarship for 2026 Nuffield Scholars to support the next generation of agricultural leaders.

Being a part of last night’s celebration was super special for Dad and I. It was a reminder that life’s moments, although sometimes small, can have big impacts. This is a night I won’t forget.

A big thank you to Lisa Rogers, Rural Leaders and Kate Scott for the invite and making us feel so welcome.”

Andrew and Chelsea Hopkins are pictured below (image 4).

Images are: 1 – Hon Todd McClay. 2 – Owen Jennings (1980), Craige Mackenzie (2008). Lucy Griffiths (2014) Ben Hancock (2019). 3 – Gavan Herlihy (1985), Nick Tripe (1967), Richard Davison (1986). 4. Andrew and Chelsea Hopkins. 5 – Ian Mackenzie (1993). 6 – Marise James (1998), Don McFarlane (1981). 7 – Hon Damien O’Connor, Allan Richardson (1998). 8 – Don McFarlane, Ronny Percy, Nick Tripe, Elizabeth Davison, Richard Davison. 9 – Hon Denis Marshall (1983), Martin Nelson (1983). Bryn James, Brian Smith.

You can read Kerry Worsnop’s speech from the 75^th Dinner below. It was an excellent speech that may be useful for those considering a Nuffield NZ farming Scholarship in 2026.

Take a read, it gives some great insight into what to expect.

Scholarships are open until 17 August.

Kerry Worsnop, 75th Nuffield dinner speech, Parliament.

I applied for a Nuffield scholarship at one minute to midnight on the night that applications closed in 2022, having pitched it to my husband at about 9.30 that night.

Now because he’s used to me doing random things, Marcus just rolled his eyes, sort of shrugged, told me to do what I wanted and said he was going to bed.

On reflection, had my application not been so last minute, I would likely never have submitted it. The fact that I did set in chain a sequence of events that will forever make 2023 a pivotal year in my life. And that is without accounting for the two cyclones.

That’s another story.

Now for you poor souls who have had two- or maybe five doses of my research, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m not going to ram it down your throats again. But what I am going to do, is give you a little bit of my journey and in it, hopefully you recall some of your own.

I left New Zealand like many of you will have, wondering what in the hell I was doing, feeling overwhelmed with the magnitude of what I was attempting, and amazing that anyone was crazy enough to fund it.

I had no idea how to hustle meetings with foreign dignitaries, executives, scholars and all the others whose knowledge I would need to augment my own.

But like all of you – I would learn.

I learned that every no, was one step closer to a yes. That every connection can yield three more and most remarkably, that my own knowledge would become a form of currency, the medium of exchange valued by those whose own curiosity would draw them into a room with me.

I learned the value of being able to trade in ideas, to appreciate something I can only describe as intellectual alchemy.

My questions took me to Washington, Pennsylvania, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands and others. 11 countries in all.

I stayed in basements, slept in hostels – had one very dodgy experienced accidentally being the only female in a sardine can room with 7 men from all corners of the world.

I missed flights, misplaced luggage and got lost on numerous occasions – but only once did I end up in the wrong city attempting to board the wrong ferry. Naturally – another Nuffielder put me up for night on half-an-hours’ notice, and on I went.

I met people like Guy Peters, the godfather of public policy research who himself had no real reason to meet me – beyond the fact that New Zealand was fascinating to him.

I found myself in incredible situations, an exclusive cocktail party with US senators, meeting the UK’s agriculture minister, in rooms with countless officials, public servants and farmer organisations and farmers themselves.

I marvelled at how many people made time for me and the generosity of spirit that every Nuffielder I met seemed to share.

For the rest of my life I will never forget the two days I spent with Dorothy Fairburn in Yorkshire, or the lengths that Katlyn Cruiskburg went to, to host me in Canada.

Of course no Nuffield would be complete without someone being sick in a suitcase after too many vodka shots (it wasn’t me) and the painful test of everyone’s social endurance that is the GFP program.

It doesn’t matter if you visited Argentina, Ireland, Poland and France as I did, or India, China and Zimbabwe as others have, the universal truth is that our humanity and the land itself connects us.

I applaud Nuffield NZ for ensuring the GFP’s are an integral part of the journey and I maintain the ultimate test of your capacity – is can you still be talking some kind of sense at midnight when your host is still in fine form but you’re on day 26 of your GFP and it’s your turn to be leader, so you can’t go to bed.

And this is where the rubber hits the road. As New Zealand scholars, we have a clear expectation set for us and we understand our role as ambassadors for our country and for this organisation.

I expect that of all the scholars world wide, New Zealanders are the least likely to go to bed when the host still wants to talk, and we are the most likely to ask questions when someone needs to show an interest, even if it’s the 500^th dairy farm visit.

New Zealand Rural Leaders Trust sets the standard and it’s Nuffield program stands alone in offering a truly life changing experience. Much like the Greek myth of Odysseus, once we have wondered the word in search of answers we can not help but return changed.

In accepting a New Zealand Nuffield scholarship you agree to explore parts of the word, and parts of yourself that you may never have reached alone.

In return Nuffield in this country defends the space for your conclusions. They did this for me, and likely, for most of you.

I can not emphasise enough the value in this.

Not every country offers this. I spent time with scholars agonising over the fact that their conclusion were increasingly at odds with the business model of their sponsor, I spent time with others for whom getting the sponsorship itself predetermined their research topic.

In New Zealand our most curious minds are entirely free to search the world for answers and when they return, they are free to speak whatever truth they find.

This is exceptionally rare in a world where research funding is thin and increasingly political and where commercial interests often guard the doors.

Our sponsors deserve great recognition and immense gratitude for their willingness to support such impartiality, which no doubt at times may have been at odds their own interests.

So my message to all those who deliver this program and to those who support it, you have created something precious and rare, and this country is ultimately the better for it.

Thank you.

Alumni in the Spotlight – Marise James, Amber Carpenter, Iain Inglis, and more.

Here are just a few of the media pieces covering the impact of Rural Leaders’ Programme Alumni in industries and communities across the sector.

Marise James, 1998 Nuffield Scholar

This is one we missed. Former Fonterra director Marise James told Dairy News that the future of the dairy industry depends upon the direction of travel with respect to climate change.

Marise says, “Farming has always been the backbone of the New Zealand economy, seeing us through really tough times and creating a place in the world that recognises the value of high-quality food, fibre and health production.”

Read the article here.

Carlos Bagrie, 2024 Nuffield Scholar

Carlos was in Farmers Weekly a couple of weeks ago encouraging a national conversation on what other options NZ’s economy may have to enjoy stronger economic growth.

Talking to Farmers Weekly, Carlos said, “Our growth in agriculture is pretty much looking to be more linear than exponential heading into the future. It is not that there are not gains still to be made, it’s just those gains are more seconds than minutes in terms of performance lift.”

Read the article here.

Iain Inglis, 2024 Kellogg Scholar

CountryWide spoke to Iain Inglis, about his Kellogg research report ‘Better cattle handling: For people, product and perception’.

Iain covers off three opportunities that come from Low stress handling – improved operational efficiency, enhanced meat quality, and a safer working environment for handlers.

Read the article here.

Sarah How, 2019 Kellogg Scholar

Sarah How was featured recently in Alumni in the Spotlight, but we missed this article in Sheperdess. Sarah is the co-founder of Landify, a platform which connects farmers with potential partners and investors to explore collaborative opportunities in farming.

The April article talks about her background, the Landify story, and on being a finalist for the 2025 Zanda McDonald Award.

Read the article here.

Amber Carpenter, 2018 Kellogg Scholar

Amber featured on page 92 of the latest NZ dairy magazine. Amber and her husband Fraser, have recently purchased a digital marketing business to sit alongside Grass Roots Media, also owned by the couple.

Take a read of Amber’s story here.

Kellogg Programme One 2025 (K53) graduate.

Congratulations Programme One 2025. 18-inperson days in Lincoln and in Wellington, one research report, one presentation of said research report, tens of insights sessions from industry leaders, workshops, reflections, at least 22 new friendships, and much more.

This graduation marked the completion of the research component of Kellogg. Scholars presented their work to the cohort throughout their phase three. Their reports will be made available on the Rural Leaders’ site in the next two weeks.

The graduation ceremony was held in Lincoln University’s Memorial Hall. Thank you to Lincoln University (NZ) for the use of this incredible space.

Lisa Rogers, Rural Leaders CEO got the graduation ceremony started, introducing new Rural Leaders Associate Trustee, Katie Rodwell (2019 Scholar).

Katie spoke to the graduates about the transformation the programme had created for her. Katie discussed the critical thinking skills, networks and connection that are developed on Kellogg, and encouraged the group to stay connected and to lean into any opportunities for growth.

This cohort’s reports will be shared with investing partners for a first preview, then more widely soon after.

As a heads-up, scholars and their report topics (under broad theme headings) are as follows:

Environmental management in agriculture.

Adam Williamson
Water quality in the Amuri basin – where are we at?

Jodie Goudswaard
Balancing profit and environment: Insights from New Zealand’s leading dairy farms.

Cameron Walker
Enhancing on-farm carbon stocks.

Jess Ross
Softer Crop Protection, The Way of The Future?

The business of agriculture and horticulture.

Michele Cranefield
From Seed to Success – Transitioning Farm Ownership in New Zealand – The Ownership Equation: Exiting with Value, Entering with Vision.

Emma Harvey
Opportunities within New Zealand agri-tourism.

Kurt Harmer
Dairy diversification into raw and pasteurised milk sales.

Pare Taikato
The opportunity cost to New Zealand of under-developed whenua Māori.

Malinda Wynyard
Building diversity in New Zealand dairy export markets for independent manufacturers.

Grant Kay
Dairy farmers love sharing data…but there is a ‘but’.

Sam Connor
Partnerships within the food and fibre sector: do they return value to the farm gate?

Kaitlin Bates
Smart Nutrition, Stronger Herds: A Holistic Approach to NZ Dairy Excellence.

Matt Ward
How can we maximise profitability in our decreasing ewe flock?

Daniel Judd
The soils gap: Interactions between culture, research and fertiliser.

Developing our people and communities.

Emma Weston
Career satisfaction and job retention for front line vets in government roles.

Katrina Roberts
Dairy farmer-female veterinary advisor relationships in New Zealand: Identifying the key attributes of a flourishing partnership.

Morgan Jones
How do we develop financial literacy in rural New Zealand?

Michele Findaly
What factors enable trusted, high value relationships between rural managers and clients in New Zealand’s food and fibre sector?

Jack Dwyer
Leadership qualities needed for first time managers.

Richie Cameron
How can the sheep and beef industry retain farm managers without ownership opportunities?

Anthea Yule
Does the decline in school bus services highlight more significant issues affecting rural primary education?

Phil Holland
Guardians or executioners: Navigating the ethics of deer control.

Richard Dawkins – from the World to Waihopai. A farmer’s path in rural leadership.

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.

Jack Cocks signs off on a year as the NZRLT Associate Trustee.

Jack Cocks has just finished a one year term as Associate Trustee for the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders).

Jack is a high country farmer who holds a bachelor’s degree in farm management from Lincoln University and a masters in agricultural economics from the University of Illinois. He is as much at home in the city as he is in the Otago high country running Mt. Nicholas Station with his wife and children.

Jack suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm twelve years ago which saw him spend eight months in hospital over six years and undergo fifteen major surgeries.

Following this experience he researched how ‘Resilient Farmers Thrive in the Face of Adversity’ through the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme. He is now a well-respected speaker on farmer resilience.

Early in 2024 Jack joined the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders) as an Associate Trustee to learn more about governance from the Trust’s experienced board.

“I enjoyed learning from the other trustees. They all had different skill areas and very smart perspectives too. Being part of a team was also an appealing thing to me. The frequent events, such as the Kellogg networking event in Wellington, were great too.”

Mt. Nicholas is remote, so Jack cites the board interactions, both online and in-person, as being another important draw. “You’re not in an immediate community here at Mt. Nicholas. You’re not going to the local field days, meetings or functions that often. So, keeping involved with board matters was enjoyable,” says Jack.

Jack’s plan is to now shift his focus closer to home, on family and the business.

“Our kids are going through high school, they’re both week-day boarding in Invercargill, two and a half hours away. It’s a reasonable commitment to head up and down the road every week.

I’m still doing one or two speaker engagements a month. I’m able to give back a bit to the sector and the community, and a lot of that has spun out of my Kellogg,” adds Jack.

Jack plans to continue his governance journey once his children leave school. He acknowledges the strong foundation the year as an Associate Trustee has given him and he mentions some advice he was given before he went into the role.

“Some advice I got from a wise director before joining Rural Leaders as Associate Trustee, was to look at the one year term in three parts. The first part is asking plenty of questions. The second part is establishing credentials. The final part is adding some value.

I didn’t throw any ideas around for a start, but tried to understand the business. Then I established myself in that second part and looked for ways to add value in that last part. Some of the work that Lisa Rogers and I were doing towards the end with the Value Chain Innovation Programme; like looking at an offshore component for it, fits into that.

That’s how I approached the one year, and I found that advice really useful. It reassured me that I didn’t need to go in guns blazing,” says Jack.

Kate Scott, Rural Leaders Board Chair, spoke of Jack’s measured and intelligent approach to his time as Associate Trustee, “The knowledge Jack has passed on, especially around farmer resilience, has been invaluable. Jack’s calm, clear and curious nature make him a standout as he continues his governance journey.”

Katie Rodwell recently joined as the new Associate Trustee, marking the end of Jack’s year.

“It was a tremendous opportunity. I thank the board and the Rural Leaders’ team for their openness and inclusiveness. I really felt comfortable and that I could contribute to make a difference,” concludes Jack.

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme has been developing leaders for the rural and agri-food sector since 1979.

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Nathan Guy

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Michael Tayler

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Episode Transcript

A diverse Waikato beef farm.

Kellogg research into carbon credits.

Catchment groups.

Reflecting on Kellogg.

What’s top of mind for Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme Scholars?

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.

Congratulations Kellogg Programme Two 2025

Geoffrey Neilson

Emma Crutchley, Jon Pemberton

Dan Steele

Dan Eb

Conan Moynihan, Phoebe Scherer, Reuben Carter, Dr Jordi Hoult, Daniel Judd

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.

Clare Bradley, Jared Clarke, Kelly Heckler, Tracey Perkins, 2026 Nuffield Scholars

Erica van Reenen, 2012 Kellogg Scholar

Dr Jordi Hoult, 2024 Kellogg Scholar

The New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders) is pleased to announce the appointment of Renée Walker as Kellogg Programme Facilitator. Renée will join Kellogg Programme One 2026.

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.

The New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders) is pleased to announce the renewal of their Strategic Partnership agreement with FMG.

MyLead: Supporting stronger Leadership in Food and Fibre.

Leading self (team member/team leader)

Leaders build trust

Story from the Sector

Leaders have empathy

Story from the Sector

Leaders are resilient

Story from the Sector

Leaders are curious

Story from the Sector

Leaders understand their reputation

Story from the Sector

Leaders are in tune with their feelings

Story from the Sector

Leaders understand their own drivers and values

Story from the Sector

Leading others (manager/general manager)

Leaders hold people to account