Jonny Brown beat runner-up Andrew Allan — a deer and dairy farmer — and Lincoln University student Archie Woodhouse to earn the right to contest the national final.
The father of two manages a dairy farm for Dairy Holdings Ltd, which milks 1300 cows.
Mr Brown said he had struggled in previous years with the head-to-head challenges.
"I’m not creative at all, so I have to figure it out. Luckily, the young pups didn’t know my weakness, so I managed to pick up a few good points by finishing first with a pretty horrible chair and putting some pressure on the others."
He finished with the most points to win the agri-skills and agri-business rounds, while Mr Woodhouse took the agri-knowledge section and George Dodson the agri-sports.
Mr Brown has spent his career working through the ranks of dairying, contract milking and managing farms mainly around Canterbury since graduating from Lincoln University with an agricultural commerce and land valuation degree.
"There’s a lot of hard work ahead. I’m going to have to polish up on a lot of things," he said.
"Once you’ve got a taste of being near the top you’ve got to climb that mountain."
Entries for the Young Farmer of the Year competition are up 30% this year despite the uncertainty of Covid-19.
St Bede’s College pupils Jack Dennehy-Coles and Finn O’Kane won the Tasman Junior Young Farmers of the Year final and Oxford Area School’s William Glassford, William Shore and Elizabeth Cooper topped the region in the AgriKidsNZ competition.
They will be among three AgriKidsNZ and two Junior Young Farmer of the Year teams from Tasman to contest the grand final in Whangarei.
