Jared Clarke is a Canterbury, New Zealand, dairy farmer with a strong record of performance, innovation and team development who visited Ireland as part of his Nuffield scholarship.

From 2017 to 2022, Jared and his wife Victoria operated Two Rivers Ltd, a 50/50 share milking business milking 2,000 cows.

In 2022, they formed an equity partnership and purchased Mount Rivers Ltd, a 1,000-cow irrigated dairy farm supplying A2 milk to Synlait. The business has delivered high returns, sustainability initiatives and strong team retention.

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“We are semi-self-contained, our cows are outside all the time,” said Jared.

Challenges facing farmers

“We are in our third successive year of very high payouts, a challenge facing farmers is costs. The war has pushed up diesel and fertiliser.

"We are in winter at the moment and haven’t done much of the spring work with fertiliser and cultivation, so it will be a challenge to manage those costs,” he said.

Although most of the challenges in New Zealand are environmental regulations and what the future looks like, Jared emphasises they differ to the Irish challenges which seem to be “more labour and succession”.

“Succession is different in different places – we don’t have the history of farms being gifted from one generation to the next as much or at all even and the tax advantages of doing so don’t exist like they do in Ireland,” he said.

Most dairy farmers are owned by first-generation farm owners such as Jared and his wife. For him, the advantages of being a dairy farmer are getting to work outside with animals and making your own decisions.

“Dairy farming is amazing because we milk the cows every day, we produce milk every day, get feedback on the decisions we have made, get paid every month.

"Getting paid every month gives you consistent cashflow, which allows you to borrow money to expand. If all of that goes to plan, you can generate a lot of wealth and if it doesn’t go to plan, you won't generate any wealth,” says Jared.

Interested in a reduced reliance on imported energy, Jared’s Nuffield research is likely to be on the generation and storage of energy.

Watch the full interview with Jared below: