Day 2 – still serious

Kiwi hospitality ensured that the motel was still open when we arrived and we left early so still haven’t seen a New Zealand country town – and won’t, if we stick to a crowded schedule. Today was spent at an agricultural training centre: Taratahi. I found it via the internet and it looked efficient and interesting. Good though their web site is, the reality is better. We met a number of staff from the CEO (no principals here!) to some of the stockmen and their commitment and enthusiasm shone through. They are not large in terms of students – about 140 residents on their main site, but they run a number of other sites where they run short courses so have about 2000 full-time equivalents per year. These are mainly 16 to 18 year old school leavers on a one-year course that is now being extended to two years. About a third of their students are girls. So far, so similar to a lot of our own ag. colleges. It is the resources that are different. They have 1,500 milking cows (and a new 47 a side herringbone parlour to go with one of the bigger herds). Sheep run into the several thousand and beef cattle in the hundreds. Of course they’ve got a lot of acres and they took us, in 4wd minibuses through some of their hill country. The beef cattle there looked wonderful and even at about 400m height, pastures were full of clover. Hills are steep and wild, mostly cleared with pockets of native timber in the really inaccessible bits. This was land cleared by early settlers, obviously all by hand: they were, and still are, a hardy people. What has struck us so far is the consistent messages that come from ministerial adviser down to trainer – an emphasis on the qualities of NZ agriculture and its products and their value to thee economy. There are issues of attracting quality into farming and making sure that schools recognise the opportunities for entrepreneurialism, for high technical skills and for good rewards, all within a great outdoor lifestyle. As we have all suspected, there is a high degree of professionalism among their managers and they can talk as technical as any Brit.. Little things catch us out. There was a discussion about condition scoring and the Kiwi said he wanted cows at about 4.5 before calving. Gasps all round. It then became clear that they have an 8 point scale, while we normally have 5. We missed the following visit completely – I don’t really know how the distances and journey times pan out, but we are blessed with Gavin the Driver who thinks about us and said that if we start earlier tomorrow, we can fit in the orchard trip; the orchard people are fine with that too – everything seems possible here – so and early start it will be! Richard Rampton, Norfolk Rural Business Advice Service Easton College