Q. What was your reaction to being named the winner?
I was truly humbled because it was given by my colleagues and the organisation — it was lovely.
Q. How long have you worked in your current role?
About 13 years.
Q. What does your role entail?
It’s all to do with the Sheep and Beef Farm Survey, a survey that’s been running for more than 70 years, gathering farm data — physical and financial — from about 530 farmers across the country to show what the actual state of the sector is. It’s an incredibly valuable source of information. The data is used in many ways, including for advocacy for the sector and individual farm benchmarking. My role is the on-farm data collection, working with farmers one-to-one and analysing the data for the southern South Island.
Q. How many farmers are involved in Otago and Southland?
I visit 65 farms but the sample is larger because I have colleagues who also visit farms in the region.
Q. Is most of the time in your job spent behind a desk or visiting farms?
It’s a nice mixture; I get to travel around the southern South Island visiting farms and having in-depth, one-to-one conversations with farmers about their business, and I spend time in the office working with that data.
Q. Is the data publicly available?
It’s confidential and anonymous. The data we publish is aggregated so you cannot identify any individual farm.
Q. What is an example of how the data is used?
The most recent is the modelling work by our analysts in Wellington showing the impact of the Government’s response to the He Waka Eke Noa proposals on the sheep and beef sector.
Q. Do you have a farming background?
Yes, we were farming in our own right at Moa Flat in West Otago for a number of years, but in more recent times we’ve developed an equity partnership, which has allowed my husband and myself to do other things off farm and give another farming family a go at sheep and beef farming.
- Beef + Lamb chairman and Southern South Island farmer director Andrew Morrison said the data Mrs McGimpsey collected helped Beef + Lamb make informed submissions on the impact of proposed government policy.
"There’s no data set in New Zealand as robust as what Jenny contributes, which we can feed into Government and say if you pull this lever it will do this — whether they choose to listen or not is a different story."
Southern South Island extension manager Hannah Blakely said it was a privilege to work with Mrs McGimpsey.
"You are such an amazing asset to the Beef + Lamb team."
