Iwi to take over monitoring role
A special ceremony was held in Taupo recently for the official signing of an agreement to transfer specific water quality monitoring functions to the Tūwharetoa Māori Trust Board.
The trust’s various dairy farms will this year supply milk from 5000 cows.
Kusabs says he was elected secretary treasurer in 1985 with a new board of trustees “after the previous managers, the Maori Affairs Department, was fired by the Maori Land Court after leaving the total operation effectively bankrupt”.
Kusabs is now one of only two original trustees; he is an accountant practising in Rotorua.
Their first project was to lease land from another trust in the Reporoa area and convert the sheep and beef property to dairying, originally with 400 cows and now milking 880 in a self-contained operation. Kusabs is a dairy farmer in his own right, owning two dairy farms. “I have always had a lot of faith in the dairy industry.”
The trust has extensive land holdings on the south side of Rotorua, fronting and split by SH 5, the road to Taupo.
They then converted part of their own property, the “north block”, to milk 1000 cows (now milking 1200). This was followed by the “south block” starting with 1000 cows, and increasing to 1500. Each farm is managed by a 50:50 sharemilker.
But stock had to walk up to 5km to the shed, so the trust bought land on the other side of SH5 and decided to divide the south block in half. The sharemilker, Matt Pepper, became the sharemilker on the two adjacent blocks.
In preparation a 60-bail rotary was built -- there was a similar rotary on the original block -- and on August 27 half the herd was brought to the new shed for the first time for afternoon milking.
In the morning the shed had been blessed by local elders; then followed speeches by the trust chairman Craig Kusabs, son of Andrew, and a representative of the BNZ, the trust’s long-time banker. The builders, project engineers, GEA, news media and sub-contractors were also present.
The first stock hesitated because the shed still “smelled new” but reports are that after two-three milkings the cow flow is back to normal.
The rotary has a GEA milking plant with automatic cup removers; the 60 x 12m rectangular yard can hold 600 cows. It has a high lift gate fitted by Reporoa Engineering. This has touch screen control and now runs on an ‘I’ beam to prevent derailing. The yard is flood washed with green water.
The farm employs six permanent staff.
Proud to pay dividends
The other original trustee with Andrew Kusabs is Donald Bennett, of a whanau considered Maori ‘royalty’ in the Rotorua area.
He came from a family of 18 and his father was the first Maori archbishop of Aotearoa, as was one of his brothers.
Another brother, Charles, led the Maori battalion and later became a NZ diplomat, and Henry Bennett was a well-known psychiatrist.
“We are the survivors and I think Andrew and I worked well as a combination, Andrew with his skill with numbers and knowledge of farming and I with skills with the land and with people.”
“I am proud of what we see here today as it shows how far the trust has come in 30 years from bankruptcy to this.”
He says 4000 trustees now get regular annual dividends.
