Candidates for the three Fonterra directors' seats

* Malcolm Bailey, 43, has a 205ha dairy farm at Feilding.

He is an agricultural economics graduate and has worked as an economist for the Reserve Bank, including doing balance-of-payments forecasting and international liaison with the World Bank, IMF, OECD and international credit-rating agencies.

He was New Zealand's special agricultural trade envoy, Federated Farmers president (1996-99), and is a member of the Wellington-based Technology New Zealand Advisory Committee.

* Fonterra deputy chairman Greg Gent, 46.

Gent followed a five-year banking career with a switch to a 380-cow dairy farm at Ruawai, Northland, in 1977.

He was a Northland Dairy director from 1993, becoming chairman in 1995. He joined the Kiwi Dairies board after the two companies merged in 1999, and became chairman of Kiwi in 2000. He was a Dairy Board director from 1999.

He has completed Massey University business papers, an Institute of Directors' Certificate in Company Direction, a number of short business courses and an international business school advanced management programme in Fontainbleu, France.

* David Graham, 45, is a Putaruru accountant whose family enterprise employs sharemilkers on farms in different regions.

He has a bachelor of commerce degree and served on the boards of Ballance Agri-Nutrients, Dairy Foods and Summit Quinfos.

He says his accounting training and practical financial experience could add value to the Fonterra board from a commercial perspective.

"The co-operative is the largest company in New Zealand and is vital to the nation, as well as to us as farmers. It needs to be well governed and governed on a purely commercial basis so the best financial performance is achieved."

* Colin Holmes, 50, farms at Galatea in the Bay of Plenty and was a director of Bay Milk for nine years until it merged with Dairy Group.

He was a member of a group born from four-now defunct dairy companies which initiated the single-company concept in the mid-90s that led to the formation of Fonterra.

"I really want to see it work," he says.

The Fonterra board needs some independent views and fresh perspectives.

"I think the really big challenge for Fonterra, apart from the normal ones of marketing and running a good ship, will be to hold the shareholders together and communicate well with them."

* Gerard Lynch is seeking re-election.

Lynch has a Massey bachelor of agricultural science degree with first-class honours. He was Skellerup Young Farmer of the Year in 1983 and supervised the Massey University farms for eight years until 1992.

He was elected to the Kiwi board in 1997, has a 225ha farm at Maxwell, near Wanganui, which was converted from sheep and beef to milk 500 cows.

In 1992, Lynch was awarded the New Zealand Harkness Fellowship to travel and study for two years in the USA. He completed an MBA degree with distinction at Cornell University in 1994, specialising in co-operative governance and management and agribusiness marketing and finance.

While in the US, he also examined the country's dairy industry, its policies and strategies.

* Earl Rattray, 43, is seeking re-election.

Rattray has a Massey bachelor of agricultural economics degree and is a member of the Institute of Directors and the Institute of Primary Industry Management.

He worked as an economist for the New Zealand Meat and Wool Economic Service for five years.

Between 1987 and 1990, Rattray was a sharemilker before buying a farm at Honikiwi near Otorohanga. It is now 200ha and carries 470 dairy cows and replacements.

He was a director of the Dairy Board from 1999, and of Dairy Group from 1995. He is a director of the Dairying Research Institute, and Dairy Insight.

* Philip van der Bijl, 58, is a Shareholders Councillor for the South Central/Western Southland ward.

He started his 20-year dairy industry career as a farm worker, moved through sharemilking to farm ownership and is now in partnership in two farms, one at Reporoa and one at Otautau in Southland.

Van der Bijl says he "fought long and hard" for Fonterra to be formed and, because he did not serve on any dairy company boards, he has "no baggage" to carry on to the board.

* Jim van der Poel has won a number of industry awards, including Sharemilker of the Year, the A.C. Cameron Award for Rural Excellence, the Dairy Exporter Primary Performer Award and the Grasslands Award.

He farms in the Waikato and has equity interests in five dairy farms in the South Island.

The former Dairy Group director has just returned from a three-month visit to Europe on a Nuffield Scholarship, which he used to study the capital structure of co-operatives.

In recent months he has attended a business strategy course at Mt Eliza Business School in Melbourne and participated in an international agri-business seminar at Harvard University.

"Fonterra is a company unlike anything we have seen in New Zealand before," van der Poel says, "and it requires a very sophisticated level of governance that is based on knowledge, skills and experience working together for the good of the company and its shareholders."