Youngest contestant proves age is no barrier
A Massey University student has inched closer to national victory after being crowned Taranaki-Manawatu's top young farmer, despite being the youngest competitor in the field.
The contest will kick off on 15 October 2022 with the first of 11 district contests.
New Zealand Young Farmers (NZYF) is inviting its members to register and see if they can make it through to the Regional Finals round.
District contests are one-day events organised by NZYF Clubs. The top contestants from each district contest will progress through to the regional finals, where they will compete for a spot in the grant finals.
Seven regional finals will be held between February and April 2023.
The annual contest saw beef farmer Tim Dangen take out the top prize in July this year, adding his name to the long list of champions.
“We’re fantastic farmers, we know it, we just need to continue to tell the positive stories from our industry,” he says.
Dangen is a member of the Auckland City Young Farmers Club and beat his brother-in-law Chris Poole for the title.
“It was a great day, we had a great time and worked through a bunch of different modules, had our farmlet that we kept going back to, and then we closed it out with Agri-Sports at the end which was a highlight for me”.
Dangen says he is keen to inspire young people to ‘get amongst it’ and says the contest’s platform is good advocacy for the primary sector.
“We need to be proud of what we do, we’re world-leading farmers, there are challenges out there, but solutions are available to all these challenges, we just need to make sure we continue to attract the right people towards the sector and we’ll carry on being world leaders like we are,” he says.
The contest will trial a new structure this year in the Northern and Waikato/Bay of Plenty Regions. These will be two-day events, with day one resembling the traditional district contest and day two aligning more closely with a regional final.
The end goal remains the same – to find the regions’ best to represent them as Grand Finalists, says NZYF Chief Executive, Lynda Coppersmith.
“We know that FMG Young Farmer of the Year is a long season normally and it puts a lot of pressure on our member volunteers to deliver a lot of events”.
“We’re trialling this to look at ways that we can still find New Zealand’s best Young Farmer, but in a way that is potentially more streamlined”.
