Rugby the passion for rural academic

Professor Sir James Douglas Stewart, educationalist, rugby coach. Died aged 84.

Jim Stewart was an influential leader in farm management and education.

He was principal at Lincoln College from 1974 to 84, the institution once known as the Canterbury Agricultural College and now Lincoln University.

He was also a passionate rugby player from his young days. He was a Canterbury provincial player from 1949-56, and later its coach from 1967 to 1973.

His tenure included the lifting of the Ranfurly Shield from Hawkes Bay in 1969 with a team containing All Blacks of the likes of McCormick, Arnold, Kirkpatrick, Wyllie and Hopkinson.

But it was in farming matters that the Wanganui-born Stewart made his lasting mark, following beginnings as a rural farm cadet.

In time there was an MA from Canterbury University and a PhD from Reading University.

He has also been described as the country's first professor of farm management while at Lincoln.

He once said he saw the New Zealand family farm as the mainstay of primary industry for the future.

It was both a way of life and a business and it had an owner-occupier worker basis. That, he believed, was why farming had been the main engine of economic growth.

In 1983 he had noted a downturn in farm investment was often classically indicated by reduced fertiliser sales. He called it "disinvestment".

In that respect he said the then Prime Minister Robert Muldoon's "supplementary minimum prices" on farm meat and wool production in particular met the objective of temporarily sustaining farm incomes.

"But they don't work in terms of ensuring a market responsive industry," he said. "In fact smps shield the farming industry from the real market situation and this is bad policy."

Sir James also warned of changing market patterns and said New Zealand could not expect to sell an increasing volume of agricultural products in their traditional forms: "We must market the right products, in the right places, at the right time."

Sir James Stewart held a wide variety of appointments employing his talents across farming and education.

But he was also always interested in settling young people on the land and delighted, in 1983, when he split a 400ha irrigation unit at Rakaia in Canterbury into three dairy farms taken over by young sharemilkers.

The South Island dairy industry has never looked back.

Sir James Stewart, knighted in 1983, is survived by Lady Nancy Stewart and their four children.