Masters’ class attracts all types

 They are two of five students studying for the new Master of Professional Management (Agribusiness) at Waikato University. The course started in November last year and, according to Professor Jacqueline Rowarth, is a similar degree to an MBA – except that in the new course the students must already hold a degree.

Keith Ikin grew up on a sheep and beef farm, went away from farming for 20 years and went back to support his family on the King Country farm last year. He also does work with the Ministry for Primary Industries and Maori trust incorporations, supporting them to work together, create scale and look at ways to support the productivity of Maori on land. 

He decided to take the new agribusiness masters degree course to be up to date with where agriculture is heading. “I grew up on a farm but the world has changed and farming is very different from even 10 years ago. I was keen to upskill and get up to date, both for the farming side of what I do and for the MPI side. 

“The course is fantastic – I have learnt a huge amount in a short time particularly in understanding the bigger picture of agribusiness in New Zealand and what’s happening internationally.

“I have international experience in my working life and have worked in China, India and South East Asia, yet to have an understanding of those international markets through the agribusiness lens has been helpful for me.” 

He says the student mix is diverse, adding much to the course. “We spend a lot of time talking about the international scene and exports and markets. So it has been great to have international students in the group who can talk about the Chinese or the Taiwan perspective. It has added to the learning.

“It’s a great course and I have been recommending it in my network as well. It’s full-on, intense and a lot of work so you need to make sure you have the time to commit to do it well.”

Zewei Chen, from China, studied for her bachelor degree in business administration in Malaysia. After graduating she went back to China but decided her degree was too generalised and she needed to do a masters in a more specific field. 

She was an exchange student in New Zealand in 2012 and fell in love with the country. “At that time we were taken for a farm trip – the calves, the cattle were so cute.” She did not know what a livestock farm looked like before that and there’s no farming background in her family. But she thought of the “cute cattle” and decided to come here to do her masters with some advice from a former professor.

She admits to finding it hard with no agricultural background. She and another student from Taiwan can struggle to understand what the others are talking about in onfarm sense. However the professors and other students are helpful and she is learning daily.

She believes it will lead to a career choice as students will be helped to define their strength at the end of the course.  Chen says she is more interested in the financial side such as analysing the financials of farm performance, than, for instance, the scientific side. It fits with her commercial academic studies. However she says she made her mother proud recently by grasping some aspects of soil science.

She is unsure whether she will look at staying in New Zealand or return to China at the end of the programme; she just wants to make the best of the opportunity she has right now. 

Agriculture’s MBA

Agriculture needs the new Masters of Professional Management (Agribusiness)  course which is similar to an MBA but specific to the industry, says programme director Jacqueline Rowarth.

A difference between the new masters at Waikato and MBA degrees in general is that students in the new course must first have a degree so they build on that academic understanding and apply it to the ag sector. An MBA does not necessarily require a degree, as work experience is taken into account.

Rowarth says people ask why agriculture needs its own management masters.

“Agribusiness is different…. We are often dealing with, in New Zealand, a perishable product that has huge swings in production and a long investment and harvest cycle. Calves born this year will be two years before they come back into the herd. That’s an investment cycle that’s not like anything else.”

She says it is also a business where we can kill people if we get it wrong in the food aspect. “It really is different. It is fascinating to me coming in from science to see where the differences are.

“On the marketing side of things… the techniques you apply, price positions, etc, are not hugely different but unless you understand the product you are not going to do it well.”

Some students in the first intake have done commerce degrees and some have business experience.

“They have realised they need to know something about agribusiness, from farm management including feed budgeting and cashflows, through to marketing internationally, the importance of free trade agreements and innovation, value chain and things in between such as human resource management, governance, leadership and risk and resilience.”

Students will also do their own extensive research projects. She says they’ve got five dedicated and committed students to kick off the one-year programme and she knows they have more lined up for the next intake in November.