Who did The Country's host Jamie Mackay speak to in June 2025?
The Country looks back at some of the biggest and best stories of the past 12 months, including readers’ favourites, news events and those yarns that gave us a glimpse into rural lives and livelihoods across the country.
Originally published June 19.
When The Country’s Jamie Mackay interviewed South Taranaki dairy farmer Brendan Attrill, he had just been named the 2025 National Ambassador for Sustainable Farming and Growing.
This interview led to The Country’s June 19, 2025, edition being the third most popular show of the year, with 12,771 website visitors and 3379 downloads on iHeart.
Read the transcript below, where Mackay caught up with Attrill to find out what makes him tick, before Attrill took off to Mongolia for a spot of dirt bike riding, this high-achiever’s idea of “downtime”.
Jamie Mackay: He was the big winner last night, the South Taranaki dairy farmer who was named the 2025 National Ambassador for Sustainable Farming and Growing. And he’s the recipient of the Gordon Stevenson Trophy at the National Sustainability Showcase at Tākina in Wellington last night. What an intro for this man. Brendan Attrill. Brendan, I’m going to talk about your farm in a minute, but very, very shortly, you’re going to jump on a plane to go and ride dirt bikes in Mongolia. Why?
Brendan Attrill: Hi Jamie. Yeah, it’s just what I do. I mean, along with being a supporter of food and fibre in New Zealand and particularly the dairy and sheep and beef sections.
Yeah, my out is racing cross-country motorbikes and doing long-distance rides across New Zealand and more recently, the last 10 years, just really enjoying going through the Simpson Desert.
And then, in about two hours, we’re jumping on a plane and going to Mongolia and going through the Gobi Desert.
So, it’s going to be a stretch.
Jamie Mackay: Well, you’ve earned the right for a break. Tell us why you were selected amongst some very strong candidates to effectively be the most sustainable farmer in the country. Ballance Farm Environment Awards is what I call it. And honestly, to win this is a real feather in your cap. You’re following in some huge gumboots.
Brendan Attrill: Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, all the 11 contestants were absolutely awesome when I really got to discover who they were and their businesses.
It’s not about me and Susan and the family popping our heads above the other contestants.
It’s just I’m probably a little bit further along in my sustainability and biodiversity journey on our own property compared to some of the other contestants.
But I think the key thing, Jamie, is that, you know, okay, it was a really cool celebration last night, but all 11 of our cohort, we have to all continue that leadership position in relation to sustainability and all our food and fibre sectors.
Jamie Mackay: You’re a third-generation dairy farmer on your farm. Is it called Huinga? Did I get that somewhere near right?
Brendan Attrill: Yep.
Jamie Mackay: And I had to look it up on the map because I said to you, are you anywhere near Smiley Barrett, being a South Taranaki dairy farmer? You said you’re kind of almost on the other side of the mountain. You’re just east of Stratford.
Brendan Attrill: Yeah, ten minutes east of Stratford, in a little microclimate, a couple of metres of rain, quite cold in the winter, quite hot in the summer.
But very good soil types, a traditional small dairying area in the province, and really strong pasture production–that just gives us a little bit of a competitive edge–you know, if you’re looking at doing sustainable dairy or milk production.
Jamie Mackay: How did the drought affect you this year?
Brendan Attrill: Yeah, it was interesting.
I look after a number of other farms in my combined role, supervising properties, and the drought in South Taranaki and around the coast was similar to a good-quality Te Awamutu drought.
It’s good that we’ve bounced out of that, and we’re getting significant covers, and cow conditions are looking all right. Some of the animal welfare stuff is looking pretty cool.
But we do need a significant recharge in that South Taranaki zone.
Central was pretty good. It was all relative. We were dry, but you know, nothing compared to like I say, what South Taranaki had to cope with.
Jamie Mackay: When I was reading through your CV, the thing that stuck out for me, because there are hundreds, thousands of really good environmentally friendly farmers and dairy farmers in this country, but you, it’s like the two Cs: communication and community.
Brendan Attrill: Yeah, I was lucky enough to be a Dairy Board consulting officer for a decade, and that gave me some really good quality communication skills.
And I suppose as I’ve got into managing large teams and been involved in charitable trusts around sustainability and Forest & Bird and some of the other stuff I’m involved with [I’ve learned that] if you’ve got a good communication style, it allows you to lead appropriately and take people with you.
And it also allows [me] to, in my own gentle way, create change, particularly around that sustainability, biodiversity space.
And the important thing for dairy at the moment is that ... we are looking to reduce the absolute emissions, so that we can create really high-quality protein; we can win on the global stage.
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And it’s just not dairy around pasture, it’s around all our food and fibre sectors that we’re creating such a good story out of New Zealand.
And community, yeah, I love giving back to the industry stuff.
I’ve got a Feds role around the sharemilker employer section, that I really enjoy working with young sharefarming couples.
I’m a member of Forest & Bird, I’m a safety manager for a project in South Taranaki around wetlands, and I’ve got two big kiwi protection blocks.
I just find the time, and generally finding the time means that I’ve got the right people in the right jobs, achieving the right KPIs, and so that allows me to motivate my people and team and frees up a little bit of time that I can just keep all that community stuff going.
Jamie Mackay: Gee, you are a high achiever. Finally, it says in your CV, you’ve got extensive experience both nationally and internationally, not only around dairy farming, but also across goat, sheep and beef farming.
Brendan Attrill: Yeah, so on the international front, I’ve worked in Ireland, the UK, Brazil, and China, being the primary ones.
I was lucky enough to be involved with quite a large corporate setup of cows in China, and that taught me a lot about the principles of business, how to do really good project management and all that type of stuff.
And then in...New Zealand...in one of my corporate roles, we finished 50 or 60 thousand store lambs down in the South Island on corporate farms.
Mum and Dad had a goat farm at one point that I went through that. That was a fibre farm.
And then...rotating back to dairy, which is for our family, where we’re sitting on our journey at the moment, as dairy is where our strengths are.
But it’s, you know, it’s such a bloody good story around New Zealand.
We are so good at producing high-quality proteins. We’re definitely winning on the global stage. Everyone knows all our products coming out of the country are safe.
And yeah, I mean, agriculture’s on a flier and it’s just lovely to see some young couples that actually want to commit to to leading in agriculture and they want to be milking cows and dagging the sheep and working on the high country stations and working in vegetable production under cover and, you know, deer farms in the South and it’s just so such an exciting story for New Zealand right at the moment.
Jamie Mackay: Gee, you’re going to be a wonderful National Ambassador for Sustainable Farming and Growing, Brendan Attrill, South Taranaki dairy farmer. Well done, congratulations on a great night. Thanks for your time, safe travels to Mongolia.
Brendan Attrill: Cool. Thanks, Jamie. Cheers, mate.