Eketāhuna dairy industry award winners: Award is for all of those who helped along the way

Alvaro Luzardo and Ximena Puig from Eketāhuna were named Share Farmers of the Year in the 2024 Hawke's Bay/Wairarapa Dairy Industry awards.

When Alvaro Luzardo got up to receive a dairy industry award, he was thinking of all those who helped him along the way.

“All of them own a little part of our award,” says the Eketāhuna-based farmer who won the 2024 Hawke’s Bay/Wairarapa Dairy Industry Award for Share Farmer of the Year, presented in Masterton earlier this month.

Alvaro and his wife Ximena Puig both come from Uruguay and say they have been blessed with being able to find the right people at the right time.

Ximena Puig and Alvaro Luzardo are sharemilking at a property near Eketāhuna.

It was in 2013 when Alvaro first came to New Zealand intending to travel around the country.

He had finished university, where he had been studying agricultural engineering, and came here with a friend hoping to get to know the country.

He ended up working for a few months on a farm in the South Island and stayed for more than a year before travelling to Asia.

He returned to Uruguay but decided to give it a go in New Zealand.

“I really liked the country, really liked the people here,” he says.

He came back to New Zealand in 2015 and found work on a farm.

Ximena says she came to New Zealand “for love”.

Alvaro and Ximena had a long-distance relationship. Alvaro moved to New Zealand in 2015, while Ximena moved in 2019.

The couple met in 2017 and maintained a long-distance relationship for about 18 months.

“We were like, where is this going, because we were talking every day.”

At the time, Alvaro was a dairy manager and when they began talking about meeting, Ximena was a bit uncertain.

“I didn’t know anyone in New Zealand.”

Then in 2018, she came to spend a few weeks with Alvaro.

It was during calving time and she knew nothing about cows.

“My parents are retired vets, so I have always been in contact with animals,” she says, although they treated small animals.

She spent those weeks deciding if she wanted to move to New Zealand and loved it.

She returned to Uruguay to finish her degree in architectural design and came back to New Zealand in 2019.

The couple married last year.

Not knowing much English, not to mention slang, when they first came to New Zealand, has made it somewhat challenging, but they credit their coworkers with providing the support and help they needed to navigate that challenge.

“New Zealand is a very beautiful country. People here have been very nice to us, very welcoming.”

They also credit their coworkers and employers with helping them learn everything they needed to know.

After three years of managing a farm in Ashburton, Alvaro wanted to start his own business, calling it Maitha Holdings.

With help from their bank and their accountant, they were able to buy their own herd and began looking for sharemilking opportunities, eventually finding a position on a 164ha property in Eketāhuna.

The couple say Geoff Arends and Ester Romp, who own the property, have been a great support as well, even taking the time to help them out when they were out of the country last year for their wedding.

Alvaro believes the key to success is not only due to the support they have around them but also in making a goal.

He says when he first came to live in New Zealand, he wrote out a goal to be 2IC on the farm where he was working, aiming to achieve that within two years.

“When you have written your goals, your brain starts finding ways to make that happen.”

Within four months, he had taken up the 2IC position, which led him to creating another goal and yet another and he feels it’s a formula that works.

He says in high school he read a magazine which included an interview with successful businessmen who talked about the same thing.

“If your goal is to buy a house, write it down. Every month ... do something ... to set up short, medium and long-term goals. Have them in writing. It definitely works.”