In this week’s episode, we catch up with Sonja Vreugdenhil - A Farm Systems Technician at Leaft Foods.  Sonja grew up about an hour south of Dunedin and originally headed to university to study PE. After a couple of years, she decided this wasn't the exact direction she wanted to go in and changed her direction to study agriculture at Lincoln University.  After university, Sonja joined the Foundation of Arable Research in their graduate programme where she was involved in numerous small seed...

In this weeks episode, we catch up with Richard Konzag - The Owner of Konzag Grains alongside wife Trish.   Konzag Grains is a 2500ha cropping operation based about an hour north of Adelaide, in the small country town of Mallala. With an annual average rainfall of only 395mm, the Konzags' have had to look at ways to implement farming systems to help conserve soil moisture. By implementing a new row spacing of 7.5inches by using a John Deere single disk seeder, Richard was not only able to...

In this weeks episode, we catch up with Angus Woods - The Owner of Left Field Foods.  Left Field products are grown and manufactured in the town of Goondiwindi, which is located 350 km south-west of Brisbane.   Angus' family started farming at Billa Billa in the 1950s.  What started off as a grain and live stock farming operation has now evolved into a diversified vertically integrated agribusiness from ‘Farm to Bag’. The Woods family business is now into its 3rd generation with the 4th...

In this weeks episode, we catch up with James Robertson.  James is one of those people who is always on the go. He's driven, ambitious, and has a sense of drive like no other. James works as a Technical Assistant in the Co-operative Affairs of Fonterra and is heavily involved with many different projects.  In 2019, James was crowned as the 51st FMG Young Farmer of the Year at an age of just 22, making him the competitions youngest ever winner.  This year, James has had to hang up his rugby...

Sam Tipping is a man with many strings to his bow.  His career began with a gap year to Canada, starting his own fencing contracting business, and breeding a Hereford Stud to now working as an Agribusiness Partner with BNZ. Sam is another young rural professional, passionate about the way people view agriculture. No matter what career channel you are in, I think you can learn a lot from Sams' story. If you would like to chat to Sam about anything we talk about on todays episode, you can...

This episode contains content that may be hard for some people to listen to. It covers topics around mental health and depression.  In 1999 Doug Avery was in a bad way.  The Marlborough sheep and beef farmer was barely coping, personally and financially, after his local area encountered eight years of straight drought. It wasn't a case of overnight success with Doug, but fast forward to today and he will tell you the last 20 years have made all of the challenges worth it.  Heading to a...

When Daisy Higgs was younger, she never thought she'd end up falling in love with farming. Fast forward a few years and the 26-year-old admits she couldn't imagine another way of life. Daisy developed a love of animals while growing up with her family on a lifestyle block in Taranaki. She completed a Bachelor of Science Majoring in Agricultural Science at Massey University, but it was only by chance she ended up working on a farm. She found a position advertised by the relative of a...