Nicola Shadbolt, who was a farmer-director between 2009 and 2018, is standing as a non-assessed candidate along with Annabel Cotton.
Cotton describes herself as a fourth-generation guardian of a Waikato dairy farm that has been in the family since the late 1800s. She is a business consultant, financial analyst and a company director.
Shadbolt is a former Massey University professor of farm management and has been dairy farming with her husband Shane and their family since 1981.
Both women have sought panel assessment and preferment in the past without success, Shadbolt in 2018 and Cotton last year.
They decided this year to go the non-assessed route with the help of 35 farmer shareholders as nominees.
The four earlier-announced candidates are one-term director Brent Goldsack, seeking re-election, former National MP and Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy, Waikato-based farmer Mike O’Connor and Auckland lawyer Cathy Quinn.
Six candidates will be vying for two farmer-director seats until the election closes on Tuesday, November 3.
It will be followed by the annual meeting to be held in Masterton on November 5, when chair John Monaghan will retire after 12 years and Peter McBride, elected in 2018, will assume the chairmanship.
Unless Shadbolt is successful, the Fonterra board will have been completely replaced since the time of the late chair John Wilson and the departed chief executive Theo Spierings, which led to two years of financial losses, major divestments and a change of strategy.
