Under general manager Richard Scholefield for the past 12 years, the 8500ha group has become the 28th Flagship Farmer for the worldwide restaurant chain and the seventh beef supplier.
Whangara is a partnership of three Māori Incorporations – Whangara B5, Pakarae and Tapuwae Whitiwhiti – representing three hapū and 2500 shareholders.
Whangara has undergone a McDonald’s audit of its sustainable management practices and is implementing a Land and Environment Plan (LEP) drawn up with the Gisborne District Council and Beef + Lamb New Zealand.
The farms complex carries 6500 cattle including 2500 Angus cows and 37,500 ewes, for a total 75,000 stock units spread across five business units.
It is budgeted to make $454/ha economic farm surplus this year, more than twice the East Coast class 4 average.
Whangara Farms management committee chairwoman Ingrid Collins said the McDonald’s accreditation is a huge honour for the governors, the manager, 16 staff and the shareholders.
She is especially proud a Māori-owned group was chosen and from NZ ahead of Australia.
McDonald’s NZ head of communications Simon Kenny said 10% of NZ beef goes to its restaurants in the United States, Asia, NZ and the Pacific.
Whangara supplies Silver Fern Farms and the Anzco Foods pattie plant at Waitara and has worked with B+LNZ on the Flagship sustainability programme through three technical audits and visits from McDonald’s global head of sustainability, Keith Kenny.
“Flagship farmers engage with other farmers and ranchers by sharing their experiences and best practices around the three Es of responsibility — environmental safeguarding, ethical practices and economic viability.
“The programme profiles those at the very pinnacle of sustainability,” Keith Kenny said.
When it was decided to expand the previously Europe-only McDonald’s Flagship Farmers best practice programme elsewhere in the world, beef production was the first focus because of its largest carbon footprint.
Collins and Scholefield went to the McDonald’s worldwide convention of 20,000 people in Orlando, Florida, earlier this year to present the Whangara and NZ beef stories.
The Whangara Farms partnership was formed in 2006 between B5 and Pakarae and Tapuwae joined in 2015.
They won the Ahuwhenua Trophy in 2009 and the citation of the judges said Whangara was the model of corporate farming in Māoridom, a model that is now spreading, Collins said.
