Bex Green Named Federated Farmers' Advocate of the Year 2026

Announced at a function in late June recognising those who "went the extra mile" for farming families and rural communities, the award went to Green for successfully fighting a move to centralise rural Canterbury policing which would have seen police personnel withdrawn from a number of small towns.

"Despite being in the middle of calving, Bex fronted our major advocacy campaign with real tenacity, often in the face of considerable pushback," Federated Farmers board member Mark Hooper said at the awards ceremony.

Green and her husband Blair farm a few kilometres west of Culverden in North Canterbury - a prominent dairying district with about 90 dairy farms. With three children aged between 13 and seven (the oldest now at boarding school in Christchurch) it is important to her that Culverden is a good town with a good school and a safe and supportive community.

"Luckily enough for me, I'm quite good friends with the local cops," Green told Dairy News.

"They are involved in the community like I am, my daughter is friends with one of their daughters.

"So naturally, when I heard that they were going to be taken from us, I was very upset."

Green used her position to mount community meetings and rally submissions against the restructure, which was eventually withdrawn when police management realised it would not get the community buy-in it needed.

Green explained that having local police who were themselves part of the community is what gives a town security. One of them is on the school board, one a member of a multisport club which the Greens have established. The police are visible on the road and in the community, often seen in uniform at various events.

"It's feeling safe because you know they've got your back," she said.

"I can just message them and say 'I've seen this happen. Is everything all right?'

"I don't have to go through an 0800 number or something to talk to them."

First generation dairy farmers, Bex and her husband were brought up and lived in Northland until about 10 years ago, when they moved to the South Island in search of better dairy farming opportunities.

"It was really hard to grow in the industry up there, in terms of getting to farm ownership or even getting to management.

"They're all small dairy farms up in Northland and they don't need a whole lot of workers, and they don't need management because they are on-the-farm owners and run them themselves.

"So we moved down here for the contract milking, and the share milking opportunities, and the scale, really."

The couple did a year on a large farm at Oxford, then five years in Cheviot, when they launched their own business as contract milkers.

The Greens have now been on their current farm, on the western edge of the Culverden basin, for three years. They are contract milking for the farm's owning syndicate, but also own part of the herd, and have shares in the farm as well.

"Complicated, but very grateful for the opportunity of the farm owners letting us build equity in different ways," said Green.

The farm runs 1000 milking cows on 300 hectares purely dairy platform with all winter grazing off-farm.

The Greens are both keen multisport athletes, Bex having two Coast-to-Coast first placings to her credit - in 2024 when she cycled and Blair kayaked in the winning mixed team, and in 2025 when she cycled in the winning all-women's team.

Blair had previously competed as an individual in the one-day event and did so again this year. Next year they plan to compete as a team of two, doing two legs each.

Realising there were a number of multisport athletes in the district, among them other dairy farmers, they have formed a multisport club, with Bex the current president. She is also president of the local netball club.

Working for Communities

Bex Green has always stood up to be involved, having been a regional leader of the Dairy Women's Network for three years.

"I was a finalist for the Regional Leader of the Year award twice - and didn't win it," she grins.

But by then she had joined Federated Farmers and felt it was time to step away from the DWN. In Federated Farmers, he path has closely followed that of Karl Dean, now national Dairy Chair, but formerly North Canterbury provincial president and also a former Advocate of the Year.

She says issues now on the horizon include local government reform, and reform of the Resource Management Act.

Green said North Canterbury Federated Farmers has recently nutted out a position on local government reform - preferring a three-council solution with northern and southern rural councils rather than a single council for all of Canterbury, or one rural and one Christchurch metro council.

"Having one rural Canterbury that spreads all the way down is a quite a large area to cover. But we definitely think that being separate from Christchurch or Metro is preferred, for sure.

"I'm always going to advocate for what's best for the communities that I live in and that I represent."