Opportunities in food, fibre sector

Ashby took over the role in February, joining the bank after a stint at Fonterra as its director of capital strategy.

Prior to that, she had been a chartered accountant and has also held roles with organisations like T& G Global and Goodman Fielder.

“I’ve only been in the role for six weeks, I’m looking forward to getting out and I’ve already been meeting some farmers and hearing what they’re thinking about,” Ashby told Rural News.

She says there are several challenges facing the sector now, some are controllable and others more uncontrollable.

“Businesses always have a range of challenges and opportunities, and rural banking is no different to that,” she says.

Among the main challenges for rural banking customers are weather conditions, commodity prices, and succession planning.

Ashby says that the challenge of weather conditions is not something that is new to rural customers.

“At the moment, we’ve got drought conditions up in Northland, drought conditions in parts of the Waikato, but then Canterbury’s been very wet and that’s affecting some of the cereal crops,” she says.

She says that one of ASB’s roles is to help farmers bank through the cycles. “We know that all commodities – and rural is no different – go through cycles and there’s ups and downs. Everyone has that and we really want to make sure we’re building our farmers’ trust that we’ll back them through the highs and the lows,” Ashby says.

At the same time, wealth transfer and succession planning are significant issues for farming customers.

“We’ve got farmers who’ve been on the land for quite some time, they’re thinking about their next move, they might not be capable of or willing to farm anymore, but they might not have children or family members who want to come in and take over the farm because young people have lots of different opportunities these days, and so we’re talking to a lot of customers about wealth transfer and succession planning and how to do that in a sustainable and positive way,” Ashby says.

“Those are some of the challenges but there is so much opportunity at the moment,” she adds. “I think there’s more and more in the sector every week.”