Plenty of opportunities out there

Donna Cram, a fourth-generation dairy farmer and Taranaki Regional Councillor, won the award earlier this month at the Dairy Women’s Network (DWN) ‘Brighter, Braver, Bolder’ conference.

“It’s a real privilege, and really humbling,” Cram says.

“I’ve just had so many lovely messages and just real kindness, it’s been quite overwhelming.

“It’s a real opportunity for me to do something exciting,” she told Dairy News.

On that topic of opportunities, Cram says there are a wealth of them available to young people looking to get into the industry.

On that topic of opportunities, Cram says there are a wealth of them available to young people looking to get into the industry.

“The opportunities, especially for new young farmers coming in now are huge.”

Those prospects include the chance to build an equity base, to grow within the industry, and become selfemployed.

“For hard working people that are willing to learnreally look for the opportunities, there are some great opportunities out there,” she says.

Cram says she looks forward to making the most of her year as Dairy Woman of the Year.

She says there are a few things she’d like to focus on, including promoting catchment groups.

Cram says the issue of freshwater regulations has been a major one, both as a councillor and on-farm.

“It’s a big change in mindset, how we think. If we think on a farm basis, we see just our part of the river, but we need to change mindsets to think of the whole catchment and our effect on it.”

She says farmers need to look at the bigger picture, thinking about the other people along the river as well as your own farm.

“It’s just changing that mindset from our own backyard to the whole catchment and whole of community thinking, working together for great outcomes.”

Over the course of her time in the industry, Cram says she has learned that the New Zealand dairy industry is unique.

“I think we have something really unique here in New Zealand,” she says, pointing to the co-operative system as one example of that uniqueness.

“I’m a true believer in our co-operatives, like Fonterra, and we are a Fonterra supplier and I feel quite strongly about that,” she says.

Cram says that here in New Zealand, there is something unique about the fact that kiwi farmers share what they learned with other farmers.

“I don’t think that happens, it happens in the sheep and beef industry, but other than that, it’s really unique for people to share their business knowledge like that.”

However, she says, farmers need to take advantage of the information that’s available to them.

“We’re learning all the time, the industry is evolving really quickly and what we were worried about 10 years ago is quite different now,” Cram says.