After a battle with recruiting staff this season, she approached local secondary schools to talk to students about entering the dairy industry.
“There is a lack of awareness of the potential careers in the industry. People are oblivious,” she said.
“Looking ahead, if I’m going to have my own farming business, I want quality people to employ and I want to help young people get a foot in the door.”
Her initiative was recognised by judges in the Dairy Industry Awards and she won the PrimaryITO Human Resource Management Award. She also won the Bell-Booth First Time Entrant Award and the Bay of Plenty Regional Council Environment Award.
It’s the second time Jodie had entered the awards, having placed second in the dairy trainee competition last year.
In three years farming for her parents Mike and Linda Mexted at Edgecumbe, she has progressed from farm assistant, to 2IC then farm manager this season.
She grew up on the farm, but was naive about the potential of the industry and thought farming was a simple job of feeding cows grass to produce milk.
She left the farm at 12 to live with her aunt and uncle to attend Tauranga Girls College, then spent two years at St Pauls Collegiate.
After school she studied a Bachelor of Hospitality and Tourism Management and worked for several years at the James Cook Hotel in Wellington as a restaurant manager before a six-month stint travelling.
When she came back to New Zealand she did some relief milking on the home farm, loved it, and stayed on as farm assistant for the next season.
She quickly realised the challenging and complex reality of dairy farming, along with the opportunities for progression in the industry.
“The more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know. Farming has so many variables, it’s a real challenge. I look at a cow now like a vat. You have to put in the right inputs to get the right outputs.
“My worst fear is the cows are under-fed. Once that happens you can’t make it up again, that ship has sailed.”
Her long-term goal is to be self-employed and own her own farm through the traditional pathway of contract milking and sharemilking, but she wants to maintain a good work-life balance.
Taking second place in the Bay of Plenty Farm Manager competition were Te Puke contract milkers Luther and Jessica Siemelink, and Whakatane contract milkers Glen and Donna Sparrow were third.
