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Neil McKenzie/Supplied
Innovation Award winners Jody and Blair Drysdale, right, with Michael Hales, Managing Director of award sponsor Barenbrug NZ.
Two Southland farms have secured top awards at Federated Farmers Arable Awards of New Zealand 2023, both for looking beyond normal farming income streams.
The awards were presented at Christchurch Airforce Museum in front of an arable sector audience of more than 600 on Thursday where farmers Blair and Jody Drysdale’s company Hopefield Hemp took out the Innovation Award, and Rob and Toni Auld took home the Arable Food Champion Award for Auld Farm Distillery.
Judges said the Drysdales, third-generation farmers at Balfour in northern Southland, “had the courage to review their traditional arable and beef production systems”, which had led them to their thriving hemp product business.
The couple, who took over the family farm in 2008, started Hopeful Hemp in 2018 after much discussion and research.
From the early days of making hemp hand and body cream in their kitchen cake mixer, through steadily upping production, they now offer a full range of hemp oils, balms and health capsules.
Doing things differently and striving for new ways to lift productivity and income helped the Drysdales win the award, the judges said.
Ivars Berzins
Blair and Jody Drysdale on Country Calendar
Twenty years ago Rob and Toni Auld decided to look beyond traditional farm income streams to start making a range of whiskys, gins and other spirits from the wheat, oats and barley grown on their Southland farm. That decision led them to the Arable Food Champion Award on Thursday.
Auld Farm Distillery, which also took home last year’s Innovation Award, was now the third-largest whisky producer in New Zealand, the judges said.
The Arable Farmer of the Year Award went to Hawke’s Bay’s Hugh Ritchie.
Running 880ha of crops and 1120ha in stock finishing in the Hawke’s Bay, his business took a huge hit from Cyclone Gabrielle.
But judges noted Hugh had built a diverse farm system to cope with change and adversity.
“He’s always looking to do better, always looking to see what he can learn from,” the judging panel said. “Hugh was proactive and supportive of the Cultivate Investments concept for the industry.”
Neil McKenzie/Supplied
Arable Food Champions Rob and Toni Auld, of Auld Farm Distillery, accept their award.
Three Grower of the Year awards were presented: Maize, David and Adrienne Wordsworth from Northland; Small Seeds, Andy and Jo Innes from Rakaia; and Grain, Sam and Hannah Grant from Ashburton.
The Researcher of the Year, Dr Richard Chynoweth from the Foundation for Arable Research, was credited with making an outstanding contribution to seed research, with his work on the mechanisms of ryegrass flowering revolutionising knowledge in this field.
Timaru’s Andrew and Amy Darling, Federated Farmers members who – in the words of the judges – “walk the talk” on the likes of soil health, minimum tillage, and precision fertiliser use, took out the Environmental and Sustainability Award.
Winner of the Emerging Talent Award was James Abbiss of Silverton Pastoral. The operations manager on the family farm in Feilding, James had filled leadership and governance roles at the Foundation for Arable Research and led a study tour to the UK aimed at learning what overseas systems might tell us.
Federated Farmers Arable Chair David Birkett said the turnout to the awards was not far short of double the ticket sales of the inaugural event last year and was a testament to the good spirit and progressiveness in the sector, and eagerness to “celebrate our best and brightest”.
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