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.”
A brilliant result and great news for growers and regional economies. That's how horticulture sector leaders are describing the news that sector exports for the year ended June 30 will reach $8.4 billion - an increase of 19% on last year and is forecast to hit close to $10 billion in 2029.
Funding is proving crucial for predator control despite a broken model reliant on the goodwill of volunteers.
A major milestone on New Zealand's unique journey to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis could come before the end of this year.
We're working through it, and we'll get to it.
The debate around New Zealand's future in the Paris Agreement is heating up.
A technical lab manager for Apata, Phoebe Scherer, has won the Bay of Plenty 2025 Young Grower regional title.