Hunting trip leads to hort career

The 24-year-old, who won the 2015 title as a first-time entrant, was a plumber when he left high school. But one year into his apprenticeship he lost his job during the economic downturn.

“Working to make ends meet I went on a hunting trip and drove through a cherry orchard in Central Otago,” he told Rural News. “I thought that was pretty fun and a few weeks later I had moved out of home, moved down to work on that orchard and enrolled in the next semester at Lincoln University.”

Gates, currently a carrot washline supervisor at AS Wilcox and Sons in Pukekohe, enrolled back then in a diploma in horticulture for his first year, did a diploma in horticultural management in his second and then in his third started a bachelor in agricultural commerce which he has completed. He worked on orchards or other horticultural ventures in university summer breaks.

That included working at AS Wilcox in Matamata for three seasons, moving up from out in the field to training and running a small irrigation team.  He also went back to Central Otago and worked in quality control of export cherries. After graduating he got a permanent job with AS Wilcox, starting in quality control and progressing through the business to his current position.

He aims to climb the management ladder within the horticulture industry. But he did not expect to take the Young Vegetable Grower title on his first year of entry, and was “absolutely stunned” when his name was called. “I didn’t think my experience would have me in a good position to win. I was hoping to at least get a place; second or third I would have been thrilled with. But I won!”

The day-long competition in Pukekohe on April 16, supported by Horticulture NZ, involved four business and four practical modules including financial analysis of buying a new tractor, to irrigation, rebuilding a pump, tractor driving, fertiliser and soil science exercises, marketing, HR and health and safety.

“It was all aimed at being a well-rounded horticulturalist in terms of running your own business,” Gates explained. His experience working in the university holidays helped him in the tractor driving – but it was his first two diplomas at university that mainly helped him in the practical aspects of the competition.

Gates is now building up to the national 2015 Young Grower of the Year competition in August in Christchurch. Although he didn’t expect to be going, he “absolutely” will prepare for it.

“I will be calling on as many people within the business as I can, to upskill to be as prepared as possible. I will do everything I can to get the win. Fingers crossed, but I expect there will be pretty tough competition from all the other growers.” 

Gates also won a one-day media and presentation course in Wellington and a travel grant for professional development valued at $2500. 

He has a few ideas for his travel grant. He would love to travel to a mandarin company in California which uses optical grading technology.  He would like to see how that technology could be used in the vegetable industry and, given his packhouse experience, he is interested in ways to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

He is also interested in some Texan water management systems and their different philosophy on watering crops. Gates also recently became interested in hydroponics for vegetable growing, especially a Netherlands company which, in an old steel mill, is using multi-level layers of hydroponic growing equipment to create the equivalent of 30ha of growing space.  But Gates says it depends on whether those industries are interested him letting him visit and he hasn’t organised anything yet. 

After celebrating the win, it was straight back into work.

 Michael Anderson (29) from Canterbury was placed second and third place went to Lance Pratt (29) from Pukekohe.