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Ian Woolly (right) receives his trophy for winning the silver class at this year’s NZ Ploughing Champs from Nathan Winter of Farmlands Fuel.
Ploughman Ian Woolly (Blenheim) and Malcolm Taylor (Putaruru) will represent NZ at next year’s World Ploughing championships in Ireland.
Assuming it goes ahead given the Covid-19 pandemic, Taylor will compete in the reversible class and Woolly in the silver class.
The pair was selected as a result of the delayed 65th NZ Ploughing Championship, held late last month at Kirwee in Canterbury. It had been scheduled to be held in Central Hawkes Bay in April, but this proved impossible due to the Covid lockdown.
Ploughing Association chairman Willy Willets says as a result of the lockdown, the Hawkes Bay farmer who would have hosted the event could not hold up his normal planting programme and so they were lucky to be accommodated on Simon and Jane Reed’s property at Kirwee.
Willets says the weather presented some challenges, but they managed to hold a successful competition thanks to the help of farm owners and helpers from North Canterbury Ploughing Association and Oxford Working Men’s Club Ploughing section. He says Oxford Ag kindly loaned some young men to help and the executive members came in and measured the plots and placed the numbers on them.
“On Saturday morning, it was drizzling and this continued all day, and the mud was a menace, but we carried on,” he told Rural News. “On Sunday, there was fog but it got better later in the day and the event went well.”
Runner up in the reversible was Bob Mehrtens and third was Ashley Seaton. Meanwhile, in the silver class, Simon Reed was second and Mark Dillon third. Murray Grainger won the vintage class and John and Sharon Chynoweth the Rural News-sponsored horse class.
The Irish Minister of State for Rural Communities says his country and New Zealand face very similar challenges on a range of issues related to agriculture, including climate change, biodiversity and rural depopulation.
In the rural landscapes of New Zealand and Ireland, a shared agricultural heritage thrives, built on a strong mixture of tradition and innovation, with mirror image climates earning both countries global acclaim for their food quality and sustainable agriculture.
Sean Leslie and Casey Tilson from Middlemarch, with horses Beau and Dough, took out the Rural News Horse Plough award at the Power Farming NZ Ploughing Championships at Horotiu, near Hamilton, on April 13-14.
The mood is relaxed as father and son ploughmen Paul and Derek Houghton get some practice in, but when the national championship starts this Saturday it will be a different story.
MPI director general Ray Smith reckons NZ has a lot to learn from the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority – called Teagasc (pronounced ‘Chog us’).
The Government is set to announce two new acts to replace the contentious Resource Management Act (RMA) with the Prime Minister hinting that consents required by farmers could reduce by 46%.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change would be “a really dumb move”.
The University of Waikato has broken ground on its new medical school building.
Undoubtedly the doyen of rural culture, always with a wry smile, our favourite ginger ninja, Te Radar, in conjunction with his wife Ruth Spencer, has recently released an enchanting, yet educational read centred around rural New Zealand in one hundred objects.
Farmers are being urged to keep on top of measures to control Cysticerus ovis - or sheep measles - following a spike in infection rates.
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