Body, 52, a sitting director of DairyNZ, chairs its human capability leadership group. He was a director of the former Dairy InSight and member of the establishment board which brought Dexcel and Dairy InSight together to form DairyNZ in 2007.
With his wife Janine Peters, he owns a 154ha effective borderdyke irrigated farm near Methven in Canterbury milking 560 cows with production of 235,000kg milksolids budgeted for this season.
He is a director of his own farming business, Midfield Farms, and the farm’s investment company Midfield Investments. He is also a director of the Ashburton Trading Society (ATS) and chair of Ruralco NZ, a new joint venture between ATS and Ravensdown.
As well as being on the board of DairyNZ subsidiaries InSight Genomics and Dexcel Holdings, he chairs the Dairy Environment Leadership Group which brings together representatives from the dairy industry and central and regional government to share information and give guidance on how the dairy industry is addressing environmental sustainability issues.
He has a Bachelor of Agricultural Commerce from Lincoln University. Body said DairyNZ had recently strengthened its regional bases to deliver information to farmers in all areas.
Solutions had to be applicable to each region and he was keen to see more demonstration farms set up.
“One of my biggest concerns is that we have very good information but we have to get that out to farms. We have to give farmers information and the confidence in that information so they will make changes on their own farms.”
He also wants to see DairyNZ use social media further.
“We are continually reinventing the website and more people are using it which is what we want.”
Staying competitive as a dairying nation would always be behind whatever DairyNZ did.
“We now know that in California they can produce milk for the same cost as we do so we have to do things better to compete but weaving into all of that we also have to look after our environment.
“The public is demanding that we use our natural resources but we have to use them responsibly.”
