‘Hard yards’ pay off

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.”