Unsung heroes under the soil
Much of the scientific work being carried out at the Massey University led regenerative agriculture project, Whenua Haumanu, is below the ground.
Monique Mathis is the first female to win this prestigious award in 13 years. She comes from a dairy farm in the South Waikato and won both the Agriculture Student of the Year award and the academic prize for the best third-year student studying an agricultural-related degree.
She is just completing her Bachelor of Agri-Commerce degree and already has a job as a trainee consulting officer with DairyNZ in Invercargill.
Mathis is the eldest of six children brought up on a 1000 cow, 315ha farm near Tirau. She had always wanted to make a career in agriculture and even as a young person wanted to help around the farm.
“I tried to do the hard yards in the dairy shed during the summer holidays, but dad wouldn’t let me,” she told Rural News.
“He said I had to go out and get other experiences. One day I sat down and had a big chat to mum and talked about what I wanted to be and what kind of lifestyle I wanted when I grew up. I decided I wanted as balanced a life as you can get in dairy farming in New Zealand and I wanted to have my children on a farm. When I go back to the farm now, it seems feeding the calves is my main job.”
Mathis recently spent a semester learning new farm systems on an exchange at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada and got 120,000 views of her blog about her experiences on the One Farm Centre of Excellence on Farm Business Management website.
Chair of the applied sciences scholarships committee Dr Kerry Harrington says Mathis was a standout for her excellent communication skills, positive attitude and willingness to help others. He says she is always ready to help classmates with problems and is an enthusiastic member of Massey’s Young Farmers Club, helping organise the ball and professional development functions for agriculture students.
Mathis says while she is looking forward to her role with DairyNZ, in the long term she hopes to own her own farm by starting off contract milking and then share milking before taking the final step to farm ownership.
“My boyfriend John Dickson is in Taranaki so that is the place I’ll most likely go, but I am not fazed as to where I go as long as I am part of the industry,” she adds.
Mathis says she won’t move towards share-milking or farm ownership until the payout improves.
Awards night draws crowd
THE ANNUAL Massey University Agricultural Awards are a great way of showcasing the talent coming through in the primary sector, says the head of Massey University’s Institute of Agriculture and Environment, Professor Peter Kemp.
Recently the awards dinner, held in Palmerston North, attracted 200 students, Massey staff and leaders from the agribusiness sector.
Kemp says some of the awards reflect academic excellence, rewarding students with the highest grades, while the other awards highlight students who have all-round abilities.
“We try to reward students who, for example, put in a lot of extra time supporting Young Farmers Clubs, sporting teams and the professional development events we run.
“The awards give us a chance to showcase the talent in agriculture and… the industry is very supportive of the dinner,” Kemp told Rural News.
“There are plenty of other degrees at Massey with talented people, but they haven’t got industry support behind them to run a dinner like this.”
