Friday, March 29, 2024

Acting, and winning, on a dream

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Taranaki has taken away the 2014 Ahuwhenua Trophy, recognising excellence in Maori dairy farming.
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Te Rua o Te Moko, near Normanby runs 500 cows on 170ha (Dairy Exporter, May, p45). It’s the result of four separate Maori trusts coming together to generate economic scale. Herd-owning sharemilkers Michael and Ruth Prankerd have just started their third season on the property.

The other two finalists, Putauaki Trust’s Himiona Farm and Ngati Awa Farms’ Ngakauroa Farm, both near Whakatane in the Bay of Plenty, also involved the coming together of multiple trusts.

Kingi Smiler, chairman of the Ahuwhenua Trophy Management Committee, said the collaborative approach began 81 years ago when the Minister of Maori Affairs, Sir Apirana Ngata, encouraged Maori to work that way.

“Today the collaborative approach is now gaining greater momentum and as we see in this Ahuwhenua Trophy event, resulting in some outstanding achievements.”

In the early years of the competition, the winners were held up as great role models, he said.

“Today they can benchmark successfully with all farms – not just Maori farms. They are adopting all the technologies that modern day farming has to offer. But they have not compromised their quest for financial gain at the expense of retaining Maori values.”

In the case of Te Rua o Te Moko, bringing together the 1100 landowners involved in the four trusts took vision and strong leadership. Anne-Marie Broughton, who was part of the team leading the case for amalgamation, told a field day on the property in March that the farm was “about seeing an opportunity to act on our dream, driving the opportunity, and making do, doing it, and being passionate, determined and very resilient”.

“Everyone quickly saw the possibilities and positive benefits of joining together, getting back control of our whenua, building a business and creating work and training opportunities for our people.”

It started supplying milk in 2009 but one of the limiting factors was the old 28-bail rotary on a block of land that was, and is still, involved in the treaty settlement process. Securing capital was another challenge, and the lowest cost, lowest risk option was to put a 50:50 sharemilker on initially.

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