increase font size
DairyNZ's new strategy and investment leader Alyce Butler.
DairyNZ’s new strategy and investment leader, Alyce Butler, is excited to be working on solutions to key dairy sector issues, with a particular focus on staff shortages and dairy careers.
She is returning to her farming roots and getting the opportunity to support farmers, helping them feel more confident about the sector’s direction.
“Farmers are facing some difficult times, with a more volatile climate, changing consumer demands and government requirements, both on a national and international scale,” she says.
“My work will help support farmers through some of these key challenges, while also opening new opportunities. I want to help build a resilient and successful dairy sector, where dairy farming is a career people are proud of.”
Her background in providing strategic advice to many of the largest food and agriculture players in New Zealand and internationally, including driving strategic partnerships to solve complex sector-wide challenges, should be a great asset to help deliver a better future for dairy farmers.
Butler also graduated with a Bachelor of Law and Bachelor of Commerce and Administration, from Victoria University of Wellington, and is a chartered accountant. She joins DairyNZ from her most recent position as director for Future of Food at Monitor Deloitte in Amsterdam.
DairyNZ chief executive Tim Mackle says Butler was raised and worked on a dairy farm in Taranaki, bringing hands-on experience of the responsibilities, opportunities and challenges facing the sector.
“We are lucky to have someone with a global perspective and wealth of knowledge join our leadership team, as DairyNZ continues to work with farmers to deliver our vision of a better future for New Zealand dairy farmers.”
Butler will be focused on delivering solutions for on-farm capability and consider how DairyNZ can engage and partner better with farmers.
“One focus for Alyce will be on closing the labour and skills shortage gap, which continues to be a key concern for farmers,” says Mackle.
“She will be helping our team to deliver solutions that attract and retain people in dairy farming. This includes our Great Futures in Dairying plan, to shape dairy as a competitive career option through a range of workplace and technological advances.”
OPINION: In the 1980s, concern was expressed in West Germany about the falling birth rate. Some simple analysis was performed by Professor Helmut Sies, physician and biochemist at Dusseldorf University. His letter ‘A new parameter for sex education’ was published in Nature in 1988:
OPINION: Dairy farmers know better than anyone that change is constant.
A four year trial has reaffirmed that mixing plantain into dairy pastures can help reduce nitrogen losses to freshwater while maintaining milk production and profitability, say researchers.
OPINION: Today marks Farm Worker Appreciation Day – a day we’re proud to recognise here in New Zealand.
OPINION: Mike Chapman, former chief executive of levy-funded HortNZ, has thrown out a challenge to farmers and growers to put their levy-funded industry organisations under the same scrutiny as fertiliser, electricity, labour and freight.
"What's for dinner?" may sound like a simple question, but for many Kiwi parents, answering it has become a job in itself.
Fifty Eight years ago, on the 16th of August 1968, August Claas, the founder of the harvesting company and father of Helmut Claas, personally presented a Claas Senator combine harvester to Scottish farmer John Steven.
New Zealand consumers are paying more for beef mince than ever before, with the average retail price now sitting above $24 per kilogram, according to Rabobank.
State farmer Pamu has delivered its strongest operating result on record.
Four years since it was first detected in New Zealand, researchers and growers now know much more about management of maize pest fall armyworm (FAW).
The Government has announced it will pause key parts of Waikato Plan Change 1 (PC1) in a decision that is set to give Waikato farmers a reprieve from new consenting and farm-planning requirements while the wider resource management system is overhauled.
OPINION: After hogging the media limelight for telling a NZ Chinese MP to "go back home", Winston Peters has decided…
OPINION: With fuel prices soaring, one would have expected most farmers to be reclaiming excise duty on petrol.
