Kate Tomlinson on data, diversity and dairy.

Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor Farmers Weekly, 2025 Kellogg Scholar.
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Ideas That Grow is presented in Association with Farmers Weekly. Welcome to Ideas That Grow, the Rural Leaders podcast. I’m your host, Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of the Farmers Weekly.

This week, our guest is Kate Tomlinson, who is a current member of the Kellogg Programme. Kia ora, Kate, how are you?

KT: Yes.

BG: You’ve been through phase 1 of the programme. For those who don’t know, there are 3 quite in-depth contact courses involved in Kellogg, and the first one is the longest and it’s quite intense. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where’d you grow up? Has farming always been part of your life?

KT: Yeah, so as you can probably tell from my accent, I’m not from Methven originally. I live in Methven, Mid Canterbury now, but originally I’m from a beef and sheep farm in County Durham in England, but moved to New Zealand a couple of years ago.

I was on a sabbatical and like the trap that New Zealand is, ended up wanting to stay longer and I’m now on path to residency. So really exciting. And yeah, farming, it’s always been part of my life, always been, I’d say, in my blood.

It’s my family, it’s my friends, it’s my work, it’s what I do on my weekends off when I just need to get outside. And you know, sometimes … it’s nice to get back and just do something I know how to do. So it’s everywhere, everywhere. It’s kind of, who I am, I’d say.

BG: You currently work for Map of Ag, so you’ve kind of gone from the simplicity of farming to the technology of farming. You’ve run the full spectrum.

At the core of it, it’s all about data integrity and insights, but it’s almost like a spectrum, and the things that we can be looking at within that. Animal health, animal welfare, antibiotic use, sustainability, greenhouse gas, biodiversity. It’s very varied.

I went to uni for 4 years to study, and then following that, spent 3 years getting qualified as a rural chartered surveyor, providing all sorts of advice. A lot of it is looking at legislation, identifying threats, looking at opportunities, covering not just agriculture, but the business itself and the land that it’s sat on.

Often there’s a farm with residential properties, and commercial opportunities. So that’s where I began. But the desire to come to New Zealand, particularly to farm, was very strong. And after 7 years of battling it out to get qualified, I was very keen to spend some time actually farming. And so I came to New Zealand and I did a bit of dairy farming, as many people do from the UK, on their working holiday visa.

I quickly decided I wanted to do something that was similar to what I was doing before, and I’ve just hopped, skipped, and jumped between farming and a bit of research work at Lincoln Uni or working in an agribusiness type environment, which has eventually led me to this role. Which is having a farmer’s brain, the sustainability knowledge from the UK.

Kellogg research – cultural diversity in Canterbury’s dairy workforce.

KT: Not data, which was my original project, but actually I’m looking at something I noticed straight away when I landed and was working on farm. That was the cultural diversity of Canterbury’s dairy workforce. I’ve never worked on a farm with an all Kiwi team. I’ve worked on farms with Nepali, Sri Lankan, Filipino, Indian, South American, British, Irish.

It’s such a diverse place and I found it such a fun environment to work in. You know, one of the guys would be bringing one of the bobbies to the shed, and then next thing you know, we’re talking about his banana farm at home, or you’re learning something else.

I visited Nepal a couple of years ago, so I was speaking to my Nepali neighbour, and I just wanted to explore it further. I wanted to know what’s been happening in the last 10 years, what kind of trends are we seeing? What does that mean going forward?

But particularly how are teams thriving and what challenges might arise from that diversity of team? And does it actually matter at all, or is it personality? That’s what I’m investigating.

BG: Yeah, that’s really cool because the research will tell us that diversity of thought leads to better outcomes as long as the structure they’re in is for purpose. But of course, there are real challenges on even as basic as language, social beliefs, that sort of thing, you know, expectations around family, just like getting stuff done every day can be more of a challenge with people who don’t go about their day in the same way.

KT: Yeah, yeah. And I have a bit of a story that resonated very strongly with me, which hopefully I’ll share, and you tell me if it makes any sense to you, because if not, I’m going to scrap it for the use of my presentation at the end of Kellogg.

There’s a story of a big fish, and the big fish is swimming along, having a great time, and the big fish sees two little fish and says, hey, little fish, how’s the water? And the two little fish are like, what the hell’s water? For me, me moving to New Zealand, you know, we are like cousins basically. And some of the things you guys do, I’m like, we are so different.

I’ve been here a couple years now, and you get to see the water, the water being the world that you live in, the social expectations that are normal, the transparency of people in New Zealand, the fact that there is no hierarchy. Those are things that when you’re living in it the whole time, you might not see. But if your staff have come from completely different ponds with their own invisible things, I could imagine it can be quite jarring.

From some of the (research) interviews, that’s been something that I found as well. Effing and swearing for example. It might just be an expression, but to some people who’ve come here, swearing is against religion and it means so much more, as in, you know, the only time someone swears was when they might try and attack you.

If you’ve just moved to New Zealand and your boss is, ah, “just effing good, put that (whatever) over there”. So, it’s things like that which I’d be quite interested to see about as well.

BG: I’m a fan of that story. It’s used in David Foster Wallace’s famous inauguration address, I think.

KT: Yeah, thank you for quoting him.

BG: And so the Kellogg Programme as a whole, I mean, why did you want to sign up?

I really wanted to get on it from that kind of self-journey thing, but also to understand and see New Zealand through a different, more structured lens. Especially obviously agriculture, rather than me just being like, how can I build my knowledge of this country in the agricultural industry and go and work here, go to this talk and try and build it myself.