Half a century of champion Hawke's Bay farmers

Gerry Sainsbury (left) when he won the first Hawke's Bay Farmer of the Year title in 1972. The 50th anniversary 2022 contest will be launched as at a function on January 22. Photo / Supplied

Some of the history of New Zealand's longest-running regional Farmer of the Year competition will be celebrated at the launch of Hawke's Bay's 2022 Napier Port Primary Sector Awards later this month.

The Hawke's Bay Farmer of the Year Award, a comprehensive test of nominated farms and their farmers in the region, was first held in 1972.

In some growth as other awards emerged in the wider sector, the Hawke's Bay A and P Society reformatted the ceremonies as the Primary Sector Awards in 2015 to better reflect the use of the land in Hawke's Bay.

The awards, presented each year at celebration dinner with more than 400 guests, now include at least 10 awards.

Among those are the Silver Fern Farms Hawke's Bay Farmer of the Year, Pan Pac Hawke's Bay Farm Forester of the Year, Horticentre Hawke's Bay Horticulturalist of the Year, Hastings District Council Hawke's Bay Primary Sector Industry Leader of the Year, Unison Hawke's Bay Professional of the Year, and the Rural Directions Hawke's Bay Shepherd of the Year.

There are also presentations of the Laurie Dowling Memorial Award, recognising significant long-term contribution to agriculture in Hawke's Bay, the Bayleys Hawke's Bay Primary Sector Innovation Award, and the Lawson Robinson Hawke's Bay Scholarship, which recognises outstanding academic and leadership qualities for students in a full-time land-based production industries programme.

Society general manager Sally Jackson said the 50-year milestone will be celebrated at a 2022 event launch on January 27, hopefully with all surviving past winners present, from 1972 winner Gerard Sainsbury to 2021 winners Andrew and Maddy McLean – a unique double for farming in Central Hawke's Bay.

Sainsbury farmed at Tikokino and the McLeans farm south of Waipukurau.

At a Farmer of the Year competition launch in 2011, indicating the arrival of a new era of presentation, former winner Peter Tod, stepping up as competition committee chairman and A and P Society president, said that function was "to do things a bit different", partly amid a need to make better use of the facilities at the society's showgrounds in Hastings.

For that launch, the society used the shearing pavilion, but the previous year the competition launch had been at the Hawke's Bay Racing Centre's Cheval Room.

The awards ceremony, usually in March or April is now held in the showgrounds Exhibition Hall, or events centre as it as been rebranded.

At the time in 2011, Tod noted what he had been told of the first Farmer of the Year contest in 1972, and said: "I think the first year the winner was phoned and told, 'You've won it', and that was about it."

Prizes worth tens of thousands of dollars are now offered, and as well as a formal awards ceremony the society and the winning farmer(s) stage a field day at the winning property.