Winners follow family success story

The Ritchie family of Drumpeel (from left) 1990s Farmer of the Year winners Sally Ritchie, husband David Ritchie, and 2014 winners Sharon Ritchie and Hugh Ritchie.

The notion of successional family farming is clearly in the air for the Ritchie family.

Hugh and Sharon Ritchie celebrated winning the Silver Fern Farms Hawke's Bay Farmer of the Year title.

Grandfather "D.A." Ritchie started the line, or at least the New Zealand arm, when he began farming at Long Range, Omakere, and his sons bought Drumpeel, from where Mr Ritchie's father, David, and his wife, Sally, won the Farmer of the Year title more than 20 years ago.

It was, however, only a part of what is now a large-scale, combined-block 2050ha livestock and cropping business of 2014, and still a family business, in which Hugh Ritchie is effectively the general manager - "or CEO". Two sisters are company directors, and wife Sharon has departed a career in education to become "office chick".

Then there are a son and three daughters, who have varying interests in the farm life with some potential for continuing the operation.

The children - David, Hannah, Sarah and Megan - are aged from just 9 to 6, so, hey, no pressure, plenty of time.

"It's a wee bit hard to tell," Hugh says, when asked which is most likely, and he concedes that there may be a time when the future management of the business is in the hands of someone else.

What they do will be the focus of the Farmer of the Year field day on the property on May 8, but in short, between Drumpeel and Horonui 726ha was in cropping production this year, from carrots to grain, and the operation is also a 1500-head bull beef finishing concern, and runs 15-18,000 lambs.

Farmer of the Year committee chairman Peter Todd commented: "This is a large-scale business both in livestock and cropping using the very latest technology to make efficiency gains in production and optimise profitability with the better land competing with dairy returns. All this is achieved with a strong focus on sustainable farming and a passion for the environment and his soils."

Former East Coast Rural Support Trust co-ordinator Mike Barham was awarded the Laurie Dowling Memorial Award for outstanding contribution to agriculture in Hawke's Bay. His five years in the job, from which he retired last year, included several tough and tight drought years including co-ordinating feed into the North Island. Winners of the Pan Pac-sponsored Hawke's Bay Farm Forester of the Year award were Hugh and Di McBain, who now have more than 140 different tree species on a 300ha property which has 100ha of intensive cropping and fattens 2500 lambs and bulls.

Mr McBain's planting includes landscaping around the the historic house on the Langdon block.

The field day on their property, also near Otane, will be held on May 24.

Third-year Lincoln University student Patrick Crawshaw was something of a stand-out choice for the second Lawson Robinson Hawke's Bay A and P Scholarship.

A Bachelor of Commerce, Agriculture (Farm Management) undergraduate, he grew up on the family farm near Nuhaka and has already had several notable achievements, including representing New Zealand in both beef stock judging and hockey.