Marlborough entrepreneur and winemaker Peter Yealands has won the prestigious Lincoln University Foundation South Island Farmer of the Year Award for 2013.
The finals were held at Lincoln University last Thursday.
The winner's prize is a $20,000 grant towards overseas travel for study, research, marketing or a combination of these.
The Yealands entry, one of six finalists from the South Island, also won the Silver Fern Farms ''Plate to Pasture'' award for consumer awareness, and the Lincoln University award for best use of technology and innovation, each of which came with $5000 prize money.
Andrew, Karen and Sam Simpson, of Lake Tekapo, were runners-up with their high country merino sheep station, Balmoral, which has diversified into forestry, deer, cropping, property development, conservation recreation and value-added processing of their wool and meat.
The BNZ award for best human resource management and the award for resource use efficiency were both won by North Canterbury dairy farmers Alan and Sharron Davie-Martin.