Telling a Great Story

I’ve had a long history of involvement with the NZ Farm Environment Trust. Back in 2010, I was shoulder-tapped to be the East Coast’s first regional coordinator for the Ballance Farm Environment Awards. In 2020, I stepped down from the regional coordinator role and stepped up into a trustee role. I'm just a total believer in what the organisation does, the values that it holds, and what it's aspiring to do. 

There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work with any award. We couldn’t do what we do without all our volunteers and, of course, our sponsors like Ballance Agri-Nutrients and Beef + Lamb New Zealand. It goes beyond a formal relationship as a sponsor; it’s the support and buy-in from their teams all around the country, like Mark Harris, Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s Eastern North Island Extension Manager. It was actually Mark who interviewed me  for social media after we received the award. I told him that I thought we won the FMG Rural Champion Award for championing the real rural champions. 

There are so many farmers out there doing great things. The odd bad apple spoils the crop sometimes, and there's always room for improvement, but the work that's being done out there is amazing. We need to tell those positive stories because it’s a bit like, “You can't be what you can't see.” 

In the indigenous biodiversity space, we’re a long way from the time of our great- grandparents cutting bush down and draining wetlands. Today’s farmers who don't appreciate the indigenous biodiversity on their property are by far a minority. The benefits are multiple, from the bird life to water quality, to shade and shelter for stock, and to just purely and simply protecting the indigenous biodiversity for no other reason other than we need to keep it there. Having a great big block of indigenous biodiversity in the middle of a working farm is basically a big natural filter. 

The importance of that is recognised by the likes of the Guild family, who won the Gordon Stephenson Trophy in 2024; they have five huge QEII National Trust-protected blocks on High Peak Station in Canterbury.  

We have more than four hundred great farming stories on our website. But all of us need to tell the stories. It's important everyone in New Zealand understands what we're aiming for, but at times, it's also the farming community telling ourselves the same story because we hear the negative news, and that's not us. The stories we tell are a real reflection of the wonderful work that's going on. 

People come into our awards thinking, “I’ll just have a go and get some feedback,” and then they end up as finalists. They’re so humble, thinking they’re just doing their job, but they’re doing amazing work. And while they’re humble, once they're in there, once they're talking about their farms, the pride and the passion that they have for what they're doing is so cool. The awards are a good vehicle to help them tell their story. 

The challenges of farming can be as down-to-earth as keeping up with technology, regulations, labour demands, and consumer knowledge and demands on our products. And climate change. There's a whole realm of things that every industry is faced with at the moment. And this is where awards have an important role to play. I think having somebody who's telling the good stories, having someone who's got your back, and having somewhere you can be part of a family who are all heading in the same direction, which is sustainability for our people, our land, and our industry—there’s only positives in that. 

The importance of sustainable food and fibre production gives us the opportunity to make sure we’re responding to global demand for natural, healthy, trusted, nutritious food that is produced to the highest environmental standards. And there’s nothing wrong with telling a few good yarns along the way. 

Beef + Lamb New Zealand is a sponsor of the Ballance Farm Environment Awards, and supported the production of this story. The Beef + Lamb New Zealand Awards are returning in 2026, and will be held in Christchurch. Learn more about the Awards here.