For the final leg of our Nuffield GFP adventure, we flew from Brazil to Chile and then overnight to Auckland. It sure was a relief to get back to familiar temperatures and humidity. New Zealand feels very like home, with nice green grass and plenty of dairy cows to be seen munching away in their paddocks.

Hill country

Our first visit was to a sheep and beef enterprise on the farm of Martin Coup, who is the national chair of the Beef and Lamb New Zealand Farmer Council. Martin’s farm is in hill country, three hours south of Auckland airport. When Kiwis use the term ‘‘hill country’’, they are not kidding. This farm varied from 70ft to 1,100ft above sea level and most of the ground was very dangerous, the kind of farm where fertiliser is applied only by aeroplane.

Sheep and beef numbers are in decline over the last 10 years as dairy farming boomed with high prices. This may be about to change as dairy farming is going through a very difficult time here in New Zealand. We were fortunate to get a 4x4 tour of some of the farm, but we had to wear seatbelts at all times when the vehicle was moving and only experienced operators were allowed to drive. New health and safety legislation seems to occupy the thoughts of all of the farmers that we visited.

We parked up on top of a hill while the dogs moved the ewes from one paddock to another. I could have stayed there for the whole evening listening to the crickets chirp while I soaked up the sunshine, alas that is not how the Nuffield GFP works.

A day of rest

Sunday was a welcome day of rest for us weary Nuffield travellers. We stayed in the popular holiday spot of Taupo. First thing in the morning, we hired out a boat and went trout fishing. We even managed to catch enough for our supper. Tourism is big business here in New Zealand and this year it looks like it will overtake dairy farming as the number one industry; helped in no small way from the dairy downturn.

Visits

The rest of the week was packed with various visits including Massey University Food HQ and also the Fonterra Development Centre. Fonterra is of course the largest milk processor in the world and 95% of its produce is exported, which makes up a whopping 20% of New Zealand’s total exports. Its goal is “to be the world’s most trusted source of dairy nutrition”. We were very fortunate to get a full tour of the company’s R&D facility with one of the smallest driers in the world, allowing for R&D trials to be run on a small scale. Some interesting recent developments include instant mozzarella.

Sheep’s cheese

Kingsmeade Farmhouse Cheese was a bit of a treat for me. A family business started in 1996 when they imported Friesian ewes as they were not available in NZ. They had to wait for two years while the sheep were in quarantine before they finally got the chance to milk their sheep. Today, they have 200 ewes and are milking 180. The ewes average two litres per day for 250 days, and they settle down to milking and the routine reasonably quickly after five to 10 milkings. All their milk is processed on farm into various cheeses including a really good hard blue cheese; it was the best cheese I have tasted since I left home.

They are now in the process of setting up some of their neighbours with milking ewes as demand for the cheese is far outstripping supply. They also purchase some cow’s milk to extend their range of artisan cheeses. I only had time for a quick peak in the window of their on-farm cheese dairy, but it did look impressive, with a capacity of 25t per year.

Corporate farming

Farms tend to be much larger here in New Zealand and their ownership structure and management tend to be a lot different to home. We visited three very different farms towards the end of the week. One was a dairy farm with 9,000 cows in total over a number of properties. The other was a beef farm that was selling breeding bulls for the dairy industry, and another amazing sheep and beef farm where the farm owner had a very innovative equity partnership agreement with a young farm manager. The young manager now owns 30% of the main farm property, or at least he is paying the bank back for it.

The fact that land is not being held on to by older armchair farmers with a cheque in the post from Brussels means that a lot more land is in productive hands

There is a very mature approach to succession planning across all sectors here in New Zealand. It is very refreshing to see young farmers getting a chance to move up the ladder to farm ownership. A lot of the farms are run as companies with regular meetings among the shareholders. From my point of view, the fact that land is not being held on to by older armchair farmers with a cheque in the post from Brussels means that a lot more land is in productive hands.

Homeward Bound

That is the end of my Nuffield Global Focus Programme. It has been an amazing experience; seven weeks, 20 flights, seven countries, 5,000km by road. It is clear that farmers all around the world face similar challenges. Commodity prices among most sectors are causing a lot of concern, but issues like water availability and skilled labour shortages are far more serious. The climate change debate got mentioned almost daily on our travels. Definitely the most challenging aspect of some of the places that we visited is the sustainability of the industry.

The highlight of the trip for me was the people that we met along the way; people that gave up their time freely to show us around their business and they were so passionate about what they do. The best people of all were my eight travel companions; we started out seven weeks ago as new acquaintances and will no doubt be lifelong friends.

It was great to go, but it’s fantastic to come back home to my family. While I was off around the world getting globally focused, life carried on at Bo Rua Farm and as all farmers would agree, this spring was one of the toughest in many years. My folks stepped into the breach, but the biggest thank you of all has to go to my wife Norma for keeping the show on the road while I was away.

Now there are cows to get back in-calf and lots of cheese to be made. Once things have settled down on the farm, I will be able to consider undertaking the remainder of my travels to complete my scholarship.

Read about Tom’s global travels as a Nuffield scholarhere.