Taratahi graduates in Dairy Awards

AWARD-WINNER: Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre graduate Michael McCombs has been named the Taranaki Dairy Trainee of the Year in the 2015 New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards.

A self-confessed townie has captured a regional farming award after graduating from the Taratahi Agricultural Training Centre near Masterton.

Michael McCombs was named Taranaki Dairy Trainee of the Year earlier this month in the 2015 New Zealand Dairy Industry Awards.

Mr McCombs, 22, is assistant manager on a Patea farm, milking 220 cows - and his success on the farm is a contrast to his childhood in Upper Hutt in a family with no farming connections, he said.

Mr McCombs, who described himself as a "town kid" had his agricultural career sparked during a school visit to a Wairarapa farm, where he was urged to enroll to study at the Taratahi training centre in Masterton.

He took the advice and today speaks highly of the on-farm experience included in the Taratahi primary sector vocational education programmes.

"There's a big difference between doing something practically and doing it on paper. That's the way I learn best," Mr McCombs said.

He said qualifications were becoming standard for farming and the Wairarapa training centre "provided us with the most beneficial and relevant career training".

"It's a lot easier to start on a farm having learnt the right way the industry want things done."

After graduating with a Certificate in Agriculture in 2010 he completed two-and-a-half years as assistant herd manager on a South Wairarapa farm before working six months in Australia's Northern Territory mustering 60,000 head of cattle. He returned home to work in Patea and will next move to a Foxton farm. He aims to be sharemilking within three years.

Other Taratahi graduates at the 2015 dairy awards include Daniel Bird, third in the Hawke's Bay/Wairarapa Dairy Trainee of the Year, Oliver Milne, third in the Auckland/Hauraki Dairy Trainee of the Year, and Storm Burrows, who won the Waikato DairyNZ Practical Skills Award.