Next year will be the 25th anniversary of the New Zealand Sharemilker of the Year competition. Southern Rural Life catches up with the first Southland and Otago regional winners. In this article, 1992 winner Tony Mcdonnell reflects on the competition.
My parents were owners of the farm and at that time my father had just bought a 180ha sheep farm at Clarendon and was converting it to dairying.
We moved on to it two weeks after coming home from the finals in Hamilton and have been here since.
We came home from the finals as runner-up and with the Tasman Agriculture prize of best stock and pasture management.
We entered the sharemilking competition because there was a concept in the dairy industry at that time that North Island dairy management was streets ahead of its South Island counterpart and we were determined to prove that was a fallacy.
The key issue we were focused on then in the competition was the per hectare milk fat production, and whether you were nudging 600kg/ha. Any thoughts regarding the environment or health and safety did not enter our heads.
At that stage we had been sharemilking for five years and we felt the win was an endorsement of all the hard work we put in and the results we started to achieve.
Before the competition we were probably regarded as nobodies milking cows, but the success in the competition gave us an immediate elevated status to farming leaders, and the media at that time was keen to write about our farming policies and people wanted to listen, regarding what we were doing and how we were doing it.
In March 1992 I was presenting myself as a first-time entrant in the sharemilking competition.
Exactly a year later I was part of the judging team, judging the Southland sharemilking final.
I guess the competition helped drive me to be competitive and to keep driving ahead and stay at the forefront of the dairy industry practice. I hope I can say I achieved this.
Dairy farmers seem to be people who have the goal to beat the previous year's production, year after year, and I think in 26 years of dairying there have only been three seasons in which I have not achieved this.
Our involvement with the dairy industry awards continued in 1994, 1995 and 1996, as conveners of the Otago competition.
This was a huge job, doing everything from arranging competitors, judges, sponsors and the awards evening.
We bought our first farm in 1996, then in 2000 bought the run-off. In 2001 we expanded our dairy farm and in 2003 bought another run-off. We bought my mother's farm in 2005 and in 2012 bought Chrystalls Beach farm.
We have three children: Grant (24) who is at the YWAM (Youth with a Mission) Mission School, Australia; Deli (22), who is soon to be married, and Nadia (18), who has been accepted for nursing next year.
With our latest addition at Chrystalls Beach, we have now sold our Clarendon dairying operation and are using this opportunity to sell our stock and stand back from the day-to-day operation of running the farm.
Our sharemilker is moving to Chrystalls Beach to operate that property and I will put my efforts into further developing it.
It will also give me the opportunity to be more involved in church and mission work.
With 30 years' continuous work non-stop and approaching 50 I am now going to do what I want to do, rather than always, every day, having to do it.
We are building a house on our Titri run-off, overlooking the Waipori River.