2026 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholarship. Apply by 17 August 2025. Read More...

Apply for 2026 Nuffield NZ Farming Scholarship by 17 August 2025. More details...

The dream that made us.

Stuart Taylor

Executive Summary

When looking at people and culture, it is difficult to use traditional academic processes to understand how we see the world, and how we think and feel. This is because the influences on humans tend to be more around emotions, rather than logic. Traditional academic process has been around logic or critical thinking, and this has served us well but I have strayed away from this discipline to explain the emotion behind our culture. 

I have chosen to deliver this paper in way that can explain the perception or the emotion of our culture – The Culture of Dairy Farming. I have also written this paper so a dairy farmer that reads this paper can easily follow the information. I have used the story telling approach to allow the reader to relate to different perspectives. The hope is to allow for a solution to develop by having a better understanding of different people’s perspectives. 

I have relied on comments and perceptions from interviewees to explain an agricultural perspective. I have also conducted a survey of dairy farmers to understand how they see or think about their work and life.

Stuart Taylor

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