The good, the bad and the ugly – 2015 in review
Another year has almost passed us by – again – and it is time for the annual review of 2015's good, bad and ugly in regards to the primary sector as seen by the Rural News editorial team...
Hard work does pay off, says Matt Bell (28), who won the 27th Young Farmer of the Year contest.
Helped by his fiancée Samantha, Bell put hundreds of hours into preparing for the competition. The Canterbury dairy farmer took the top honour at the grand final in Taupo on July 4.
“It is very much a team effort. There is no way I could have done it without Samantha. She has read questions until she couldn’t talk… and the support – like knowing I could come home and start studying while tea was cooked,” he told Rural News.
“The biggest piece of advice, especially for guys who want to make grand final, is make sure you’ve got a great partner who will put up with it.”
The title is something Bell says he has wanted for a long time and it’s “awesome to achieve it”. He was placed third in the grand final in Auckland in 2013 and has been building towards it for three years. But on October 1, 2014 he got down to hard study for this year’s grand final.
“One of the coolest things was at the grand final ball one of the agri kids – I think they finished second – came up and said ‘do you think we can have a selfie with you’. That’s pretty cool, that’s awesome.”
The contract milker won the Aorangi regional final in Oamaru in February.
Bell works as business manager for Align Longfield. In peak season the fully irrigated Mid-Canterbury farm will run 1080 cows. This is Bell’s first year in the business and in the next year he and Samantha will become equity managers in their bid to become farm owners.
Bell can’t recommend the Young Farmer competition highly enough.
“You learn all these great new skills… but the highlight for me has been the networking, the different people and relationships I have been able to form. You don’t realise how well the contest is known until you enter and realise all these people know what the contest is about.”
OPINION: While farmers are busy and diligently doing their best to deal with unwanted gasses, the opponents of farming - namely the Greens and their mates - are busy polluting the atmosphere with tirades of hot air about what farmers supposedly aren't doing.
OPINION: For close to eight years now, I have found myself talking about methane quite a lot.
The Royal A&P Show of New Zealand, hosted by the Canterbury A&P Association, is back next month, bigger and better after the uncertainty of last year.
Claims that farmers are polluters of waterways and aquifers and 'don't care' still ring out from environmental groups and individuals. The phrase 'dirty dairying' continues to surface from time to time. But as reporter Peter Burke points out, quite the opposite is the case. He says, quietly and behind the scenes, farmers are embracing new ideas and technologies to make their farms sustainable, resilient, environmentally friendly and profitable.
Relationships are key to opening new trading opportunities and dealing with some of the rules that countries impose that impede the free flow of trade.
Dawn Meats chief executive Niall Browne says their joint venture with Alliance Group will create “a dynamic industry competitor”.
OPINION: Media luvvies at Stuff, the Spinoff and the Granny Herald are spending more time than ever navel-gazing about why…
OPINION: Why does it take Treasury so long to turn around its figures on how the economy is tracking?