That is recognition for his fledgling beef bar product Mīti which combines a taste of New Zealand with 12-month-old dairy beef to create a nutritious snack.
During the week, he will be handing out thousands of samples of the still-to-be refined product which is part of his broader vision for that stock class.
He was on a mission to provide incentives via onshore value-add so more animals could have a life beyond 4 days of age.
He believed there was an opportunity to "tell a whole new story about a very special ingredient" and for the industry to adopt it at scale, providing positive environmental and sustainability outcomes.
Brought up in Invercargill, Mr Carson was not from a rural background. His agriculture journey began in 2012 when he converted an old shed and took 4-day-old non-replacement bull calves through to finishing bull beef which were killed at 18 months.
The Friesian bulls he was rearing got him thinking about how there was so much data on them collected from birth to death, all part of the traceability and transparency story consumers were looking for.
He also wondered why New Zealand did not have its own version of a meaty snack — South Africa had biltong and the United States had jerky.
After finishing farming and cash-strapped, Mr Carson acknowledged it was difficult to start a venture from scratch without capital.
He looked at what others were doing in the space; everyone was saying there needed to be a solution but solutions were not being discussed. Yet the stock class was an easy source of protein.
Bull beef was largely used for manufacturing beef so he questioned why not make a product from manufacturing beef which could be mixed with other uniquely New Zealand ingredients for Aotearoa’s own dried meat snack.
So in 2021, he bit the bullet and registered a company, set out a series of goals and decided to "figure it out" as he went along, using the skills he had gained through his background in sales, technology, finance and farming.
He figured if it was a product that was healthy and played into New Zealand’s special attributes, then there was potential for a successful export product. And, with his sales background, he knew it was something that was marketable.
When that finished, he approached Agmardt, knowing he needed to have a product, rather than just an idea. A friend from university days was keen to be involved and they did a joint application which successfully obtained funding for proof of concept at the University of Otago.
Mr Carson had always been fascinated with honeydew, a little-known sticky sweet substance found in South Island beech forests. Honey had always been a natural preservative and he was keen to see what would happen when combined with beef.
The product had to have a shelf life and he did not want to use a heap of salt or nitrates to ensure that. The work at the university suggested the honey and beef combination could achieve the shelf life required.
He then started to engage with AgResearch and he was keen to find out how to fortify the mince with nutrient-rich organ meat.
With a Maori background (Ngai Tahu), the Maori agribusiness department at AgResearch connected him with a "whole lot of other people" and AgResearch also encouraged him to apply for funding through the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Maori Agribusiness Innovation Fund.
That was conditional on getting letters of support from industry and allowed him to take the project through to commercialisation and trials.
Embracing the principles of Mātauranga, natural ingredients such as horopito, kawakawa, honeydew and seaweed were used alongside about 70% beef mince and 4% liver.
Product trials were now under way at pilot-scale food processing facility The FoodBowl in Auckland, where it was several weeks into testing the 12-month shelf life.
A German company was conducting trials on the product. Its pulsed electric field technology opened the pores of the meat and cooked it faster at a lower temperature, saving both energy and time and retaining more nutrients, he said.
Ideally, Mr Carson would like to eventually see a factory established in North Otago. He believed it was a stock class which could accelerate adoption of technology in agriculture in New Zealand.
Potentially, it would also appeal to young people as it "gamifies farming a bit" through that introduction of technology.
Smaller land blocks and remote areas of land could be utilised efficiently without needing a skilled and knowledgeable workforce.
Mr Carson said his venture was a calculated risk and one that he was passionate about. He was convinced it "ticks all the boxes" of where future foods needed to be.
While farmers were always being asked to change, the meat industry had hardly changed at all. One issue it had was the short-shelf life meaning it was a price-taker, he said.
There was potential to fill gaps when processing plants were quiet and also for a continuous supply of the stock class. There were also opportunities for the likes of co-products, leather and bone broth.
Large purchasers of manufacturing beef, like McDonald’s, could achieve ESG goals more simply by adopting 12-month-old dairy beef as a manufacturing beef option.
Dairy beef already had 30% less greenhouse gas emissions and, when killed at 12 months, were being killed at the peak of feed efficiency.
It offered solutions to farmers in sensitive catchments and there was ease of management as they were younger animals.
Farmers were also looking for solutions and 12-month dairy beef, depending on timing, could mean no wintering. At the moment, he was targeting about $8kg carcass weight.
Mr Carson hoped what he was doing would grab enough attention that others would start looking at similar solutions down the track. New Zealand had some "amazing people" — it was just a matter of connecting with them.
Collaboration had been a big part of Mīti and he was looking forward to meeting some of those people who he had worked with — yet never met — at Fieldays. The innovation award will be presented on Wednesday night.
Fieldays is the southern hemisphere’s largest agricultural event and the innovation awards attracted finalists ranging from individuals, local Waikato companies, and New Zealand-based global companies, to entries from around the world. There were 25 finalists in the prototype category.
