Kimberly Crewther (36) has just taken over this role previously held by Simon Tucker who’s now New Zealand High Commissioner in Canada.
Crewther heads a team of 12 which includes water quality scientists and other specialists devoted to ensuring government and the private sector are engaged and informed about DairyNZ’s policy positions
Crewther says the other big issue for the dairy sector is the Resource Management Act (RMA) reforms, which DairyNZ would like to see developed so that science, economic and social considerations drive the policy. “DairyNZ made a big investment over the last two years and in part of the team I lead within DairyNZ is a group of five water quality specialists whose job is to provide that scientific expertise that helps inform the policy processes.”
Dairying is in Crewther’s blood. Her parents were dairy farmers north of Wellington but they later moved to the Manawatu where her elder brother Andrew Hoggard now runs the farm. She studied agriculture at Massey University and decided during a lecture by Alan Rae that she wanted to work in trade policy.
“Allan Rae was talking about the Uruguay Round of trade talks and I decided I wanted to be involved in the next WTO round which would bring further benefits to New Zealand agriculture.”
Crewther spent two years working for Meat New Zealand (Beef and Lamb NZ) in the trade policy group before moving to Fonterra where she became their policy and advocacy manager for Europe, based in Amsterdam. “I led Fonterra’s relationship with European governments and industry, to grow and protect access and opportunity for Fonterra products in Europe. It was a big, exciting job to represent New Zealand dairy and Fonterra, and of course I travelled around Europe. The trip between Wellington and Hamilton each week is a little different from Amsterdam and Paris.”
The excitement of Europe was punctuated by another adventure – this time prompted by her husband, a professional rugby coach, Kane Crewther. He was offered a coaching role in Chile for two years just before she gave birth to twins.
“Fonterra was good enough to provide a flexible working-from-home relationship for me which enabled me to go with him there for two years. I was Fonterra’s manager for sustainable dairy strategy at the time, working on issues including the ETS, biosecurity related policy and other topics. It also involved determining how Fonterra reacted with other organisations globally on sustainability. I was involved in the development of the global dairy agenda for action on climate change.”
Today Crewther works in the Wellington CBD close to other industry-good organisations such and Beef + Lamb NZ, HortNZ and Federated Farmers, plus government departments and agencies she must interact with. The challenge is to inform and persuade central and local government policy makers to back policy with robust science.
She also has another role –executive director of the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand (DCANZ) which represents all the nation’s dairy companies to government.
But for Crewther, home is in the country about 70km from the capital on a small lifestyle block near Otaki. A far cry from the glamour and glitz and high-stakes politics of Brussels, London, Paris and Amsterdam.
