“No one else was doing these subjects so I thought ‘Let’s give it a go’ and ended up loving it,” she said at the sod turning ceremony for the Experience Centre to be built at Mt Albert Grammar School.
One aim of the project was to have many more youngsters following her path, which she hoped would involve study at Massey University.
“The generation before me took arts and maths,” she said.
“But agriculture is what the New Zealand story is all about.”
Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy said he was very supportive of the Experience Centre that would showcase all agriculture had to offer, not only to school pupils but also to visiting groups and tourists.
“It’s a fantastic initiative with one million people within 45 minutes’ drive,” he said.
“It will be a game-changer for the primary sector in the future.”
There was a big challenge ahead to get more students into careers in agriculture as a way of closing what he called the divide between urban and rural residents.
“We need to compete with lawyers, doctors and surgeons because agriculture is going to be even more technical,” he said.
And if NZ exporters wanted to add value to their products they needed to be more creative.
In 1932 the ASB Bank gave the school a lease of 8.1 hectares next to it. It had paid 2000 pounds for the land, stock, plant and equipment and that enabled Mt Albert Grammar to teach its students the fundamentals of agriculture.
A two-bail dairy and small shearing shed remained on the farm and would be kept under the new development.
In 2012 a 99-year lease was signed at a rate of $1 a year to ensure the land would be kept safe and three years later the plan was unveiled to build the centre of excellence to provide a new future for agrifood.
The centre, which had been fully consented by Auckland Council, would be interactive and educational with a focus on the reality of modern, sustainable farming.
It would offer animal handling and practical demonstrations of dairy and horticulture production, food preparation and science. The focus would very much be on exploratory, hands-on techniques and it would also be versatile enough to be set up for seminars and conferences.
It would cost about $13 million with the ASB MAGS Farm Advisory Committee responsible for raising the money.
ASB rural banking general manager Richard Hegan said now was the time to take control of the rural narrative, when the divide between rural and urban was at its greatest and unfortunately the two groups were still moving apart.
In that spirit the founding partners had come together to be part of the solution and encourage young people into agriculture as a career.
The partners included Fonterra, Plant and Food Research, Landcorp, Forest Growers, NZXAgri, KPMG, Ravensdown and PGG Wrightson.
KPMG’s global head of agribusiness Ian Proudfoot described the Experience Centre as a jewel.
“It’s a truly globally unique facility which will tell the story of agrifood and the sustainable production of food, fibre and timber for the world’s most affluent consumers,” he said.
While the school, which had a roll of 2900 pupils and 300 staff, had 160 students enrolled in agriculture-related courses, it was hoped that would grow quickly to 500.
And the plan was to have up to 25,000 students from other schools visit the centre every year to learn more about what the primary sector did.
Headmaster Patrick Drumm said there was huge momentum around the project.
“The Experience Centre symbolises so much of what we want to do to inspire young people to take up careers in agriculture,” he said.
“It’s a great time to be a Mt Albert Grammar student and a young New Zealander.”
