Atkinson, a technical advisor for Apata Group, Te Puke, took the title last month, the first woman to win the award in its 11-year history. She also won Young Fruit Grower and three other titles: Countdown Best Business, SPS Best Innovation and Fruitfed Supplies Best Speech.
Atkinson, who has leadership ambitions in the industry, hopes her win will encourage more young people to get involved in horticulture. She loves talking to teenagers and testing their brains about the industry.
“Most of them see horticulture as plants, dirt and picking fruit. But we also need engineers, people to do our accounts and drone pilots. There are many opportunities,” Atkinson says.
“The experience of Young Grower was very rewarding, challenging. It was an amazing experience: it pushed my boundaries and limits, I met some amazing people and I got to reconnect with people in the vegetable industry.
“It was a great opportunity to showcase the people we’ve got in the industry.
“But it is a nerve wracking experience to put yourself up there to do it.”
Atkinson is not from a horticultural family, but was brought up in the vegetable growing area of Pukekohe.
She says she was lucky to have an agriculture teacher who pushed her to look at horticulture as a career and she ended up getting a holiday job with a company growing glasshouse tomatoes. They offered her a sponsorship deal to study.
She completed her Bachelor of Science in Horticulture and then worked for Enzo for two years as an assistant grower manager looking after 6.3ha of glasshouse tomatoes.
She travelled for her OE, working in the same industry -- glasshouses. She spent a year near London, working for a company growing capsicums. She ended up in the West Midlands, an hour south of Birmingham, working for a plant propagation unit that also did baby leaf greens, watercress, strawberry and vegetable propagation.
Back in New Zealand she worked for a culinary herb company as an assistant, helping with the growing, and did consulting work for Auckland City Council.
Realising there were more job opportunities in Bay of Plenty she joined Apata Group as technical support to growers, helping them with health and safety compliance, growing, spray programmes and fertiliser.
Atkinson is also in charge of the technical extension programme and runs the harvest for one of the company’s sites, among other responsibilities.
“I have a broad role, helping growers achieve the best they can out of the crop they have, right through pruning to harvest.”
Atkinson would like to do leadership programmes and wants to look at director training.
A big future
Erin Atkinson believes the horticulture industry has a big future ahead.
“I think of the amazing opportunities I have had, so many amazing mentors I worked with in the last couple of years and I hope someday I will be a mentor for someone and spark that passion.”
She believes there are exciting times ahead for the horticulture industry.
“It is just a shame that people don’t see that from the outside. How do you get people to enter the industry if they don’t see the excitement?
The industry is working through that to make sure they are still producing high quality products without chemicals “so there are pretty cool challenges to work through as well”.
Atkinson says horticulture faces the same challenges as other primary industries to “bridge the gap between primary industries and urban environments because [urban dwellers] just don’t know about what goes on in the field.”
