Between the lines: Lesson on leadership at the grassroots

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Last Thursday, the Royal Agricultural Society provided a too rare moment on the farm scene - a celebration of enterprise and success.

It was capped the following day with a triumph of good business sense over politicking and parochialism when the Dairy Board announced advanced plans for the first big transtasman dairy business.

The board's move to take a shareholding in Victorian-based Bonlac Foods was widely regarded by dairy farmers, still optimistic of achieving a mega cooperative, as having headed off similar plans by at least one of the major manufacturing co-ops.

They believe that a cooperative leaping the ditch would have spelled the end of the integrated industry, something many still want despite the failure of New Zealand Dairy Group and Kiwi Dairies to effect it by merging.

The two events late last week, coupled with an optimistic report from the OECD on the outlook for global agricultural trade for the next five years, should inject confidence into the farm sector.

The society's occasion - the awarding of the prestigious Farmers Mutual Group rural excellence award - will perhaps have a more subtle effect on the farming arena than the board's significant step.

However it should not be underrated. Farming contests, from shearing and sharemilking competitions to carcase and farm commerce awards, all have one over-riding goal - to raise profitability by improving the way things are done.

They succeed extraordinarily well. Contestant after contestant in a range of competitions have attested to the benefits of benchmarking themselves against their fellow farmers, and of associating with knowledgeable judges who dispense sound advice with their appraisals.

The rest of the farming community shows a willingness to improve, too, by showing up in droves to pick the brains of winners when field days are held on their properties.

The agricultural sector, notorious for howling its woes from the rooftops, would do well to make more of such success stories.

The inspiration they provide within the sector, and possibly more generally, could fill the leadership vacuum agriculture has suffered for at least the past decade.

The days of the heads of the wool, meat and dairy boards bending the ear of Government ministers or, at times, simply telling them the way things would be, are long gone.

The politicking and parochialism that destroyed the dairy cooperative merger has permanently soured many dairy farmers on the way their industry is being run.

The Dairy Board's move with Bonlac was hailed by Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton as "a welcome assertion of leadership."

Also greatly admired in Thursday's contest were the successful farmers trading directly with their customers.

As a contest judge said; "The knowledge economy is certainly alive and well on New Zealand farms."

So, too, is leadership by example.