Agribusiness Report: Couple's lifestyle choice great business

Happy sharemilkers Jody and Charlie McCaig.

Before entering the dairy industry five and a half years ago, Charlie McCaig said that he had never really come within three feet of a cow. Moving to New Zealand from office jobs in Britain, Charlie and wife Jody had envisaged a similar lifestyle in Auckland and Wellington. However, five years on, the Taranaki-based couple have been awarded New Zealand Sharemilkers/Equity Farmers of the Year at the recent NZ Dairy Industry Awards, and foresee a positive future in dairy farming ahead.

The awards represented an opportunity for the McCaigs to build profile and networks in the agricultural industry. "Neither of us come from farming backgrounds, so we got into the dairy industry on the bottom rung. It was pretty clear straight away that you need to have good networks in farming in order to succeed," Charlie says.

"The competition sells itself on two fronts really; one is to give you the ability to benchmark yourself against other people and see how well you're doing, and the other is building up really good networks of people, being either peers or people who are way ahead of you."

The couple first began to dabble in dairying as they helped with relief milking for Jody's brother. Over time, as they expanded to relief milking for other farms, the appeal of full-time dairy farming grew. "The more people you talk to, the more people start talking about their journey through the industry. There are a lot of people who don't start off farming ... Once we were in and started talking to people, we saw how much positivity there was about the progression that you can make in the industry and the expertise that you can build.

"We had aspirations of doing something interesting with our lives, and for me, pretty quickly that thing became dairy farming," Charlie says.

Also crucial was the potential to build a career which could allow for a family lifestyle alongside capital growth and personal development. "All these people that we saw doing it, were doing it with their families by their sides as well. They were all self-employed and working hard at building their futures, but it was very much a family affair, and that was pretty different to anything I'd seen before." Now, with two young sons, farming allows for a work-life balance that would probably be impossible in other sectors.

"If you compare the last five years and what we've been able to achieve as well as having two children, to the previous five years, there is no comparison in terms of how much we've learnt and how much money we've been able to earn," Jody says.

"You get the financial benefits of both parents being in full time employment, but you don't have to put your kids in daycare to achieve that."

The McCaigs recently relocated to a new Taranaki-based farm, where they are 50 per cent sharemilking. However, their goals are not focused on farm ownership, somewhat uniquely in the dairy industry. "We don't necessarily have an aspiration to own our own dairy farm," Jody says.

Instead, they are focused on lifestyle goals, such as travel and financial freedom. They travelled around Europe extensively in their youth, but on a budget. "In our 60s, we'd love to be able to live that lifestyle again, but with money. To be the people you saw eating in restaurants and sleeping on mattresses in hotels rather than finishing off your €2 bottle of wine and slipping into your tent. So our goal is a lifestyle goal really; we want to be able to be in our 50s and have choices."

However, this broader ambition has specific financial targets behind it. "There's an equity goal for 20 years time that will provide that lifestyle for us, and so we started with that and then worked backwards. We've got five, 10, 20 year goals in terms of our equity growth that we need to achieve in order to keep our high level target."

Neither Jody nor Charlie had tertiary qualifications in agriculture prior to entering the dairy industry, but they cite business nous and determination to succeed as crucial factors in their success.

"Farming is still very much applied knowledge, it's all about getting out there and doing it. Your skill is applying the technical stuff to the real world in a practical way."

Asked whether the dairy industry is doing enough to attract potential farmers such as themselves, who aren't from farming backgrounds, the McCaigs are positive about what is being done in the sector. However, there is always room for growth. "The more positive stories about dairy farming are published, hopefully the more people realise that you don't have to be a farmer's son or daughter to make a go of it," Jody says.

"The more people you have in the industry bringing new ideas and new attitudes in, it's going to be better for the entire industry."