So when retiring southern Northland shareholders’ councillor Tracey Bryan asked if he’d be interested in putting his name forward for the Fonterra Shareholders’ Council (FSC), he believed he was already “part of the way there”.
“But all of a sudden it’s me in the firing line,” he says of his new role, which he took on in late April.
His family farmed at Waipu, further north, milking 200 cows. After he attended St Kentigern College in Auckland then completed a Diploma of Agriculture at Lincoln University he returned home 28 years ago.
“But the farm wasn’t big enough to eventually support two families.”
With an unconditional sale on the farm, nothing suitable presenting itself in Waikato and prices going up fast, his parents bought 133ha at Te Hana, just north of Wellsford. Eight years later Greg and his wife Ingrid, a primary school teacher, bought the farm from them. Since then they have added another 270ha by buying and leasing four neighbouring properties. They have five children ranging in age from 12 to 19.
The couple milked 680 Jersey-cross cows in 2015-16, producing 215,000kg milksolids (MS), 15,000kg up on the previous year.
“We got to Christmas thinking it was a bad season with a bad payout,” he said.
But a good summer and warm autumn with frequent rain has seen good grass growth and their 20ha of chicory “out of control”. That has its challenges, with large numbers of ducks congregating on a neighbouring property’s dam.
“But they haven’t beaten me yet.”
About 20ha of maize silage was grown on the milking platform this year as part of a 30ha annual regrassing programme. The farm hasn’t bought in any palm kernel for the past two years, after using just a couple of truckloads.
Greg is targeting 240,000kg MS in the 2016-17 season, after boosting cow numbers back to the 730 they previously milked. They’ll all be put through the 40-aside herringbone dairy, which has twice been extended from the original 18-aside. But there is a 40-bail rotary on a neighbouring block that Greg has leased and took full ownership of at the end of May. He’s busy doing drainage work on the wet areas there as he did on the home farm when they first arrived.
With two limestone quarries available one is set up as a feedpad with effluent collected in catchment ponds then pumped up to the effluent system by the dairy. A new weeping wall system was put in four years ago, extending the area covered to 35ha, and a switch was made from travelling irrigators to pods to ensure application levels were optimal.
They have three full-time staff, and the partner of one comes in to help with rearing 140 calves in spring. All young stock are wintered on the farm.
“Having stable staff makes life a lot easier,” he says.
Asked about the biggest issues he’ll face in his new role, Greg is quick to cite farmers’ lack of connection with Fonterra.
“How do we get them to take an interest?”
With 10,500 shareholders he says it’s near-impossible to keep everyone happy.
“But there should be a lot of faith in what the FSC is doing,” he says.
“The amount of robust discussion in its meetings has impressed me.”
As well as the large amount of deliberation over small details Greg says there’s also a lot of behind-closed-doors work. And farmer-shareholders’ requirement for direct contact with board members, even if the board’s size is reduced, is “non-negotiable”.
While he’s come on to the FSC at what he describes as a volatile time, he believes proposed changes to the board selection process will lead more farmers to put their names forward, or accept when they are shoulder-tapped for this role.
“In the past some couldn’t be bothered with the process,” he says.
He’s in favour of 360-degree performance reviews for board directors and believes this could be extended to FSC members. Of immediate help would be a couple of planned new training programmes, which could be added to the existing governance development programme, which he hopes to complete in the future.
“We want people on the board ready to go, especially if the size is reduced,” he says.
“And once farmers are engaged in the co-op getting them to run for the FSC won’t be a problem.”
