Growing Future Farmers

The Growing Future Farmers program began out of an increasing need to support more pathways to farming. It now provides aspiring farmers around the country with a structured program including hands-on farm work from which they graduate with a recognised qualification. The process relies on farm trainers like Mark Crawford at Kaukonga Farm. Kaukonga Farms is situated in the Waikato Valley so I'm manager of Kaukonga Farms. We are 1040 effective hectares running sheep and beef. We run three and a half thousand ewes, eleven hundred hoggarts and a thousand Angus cattle. This includes 240 Angus cows. Also to that we have a trading component we buy in 14 to 18 month stares and take them through to slaughter. Our main goal here at Kaukonga is to produce a high-end experience for the consumers so we place big emphasis on marbling and carcass quality. So this drives our breeding, feeding and finishing policies, both sheep and beef. It sold in 2023 and Pip and Richard Lawrence took over and we've been in a development stage from then on, so infrastructure and then just changing from Herefords to Angus. Pip and Richard wanted to back an initiative like Growing Future Farmers, get them behind young people and just watch them grow, so that's where I come in. 2024 we got Max Korn, he started, so yeah it's been evolving from then. I love the programme and what it's got to offer. So I'm the Growing Future Farmers student here at Te Wairoa Farms and this is my second year. I'm a student and a team member. I've wanted to be a farmer since I was a little kid, so I grew up farming. My grandparents, my mum's dad and her brother are farmers, so I grew up going around with my granddad shifting stock from, I don't know, at the age of three maybe. I was really young. In school I did ag but I didn't know if I was going to end up farming and so I went and was a tour guide for two years at the Waitama Glowworm Caves. After two years of doing that I just really missed it and wanted to get back out there, so I decided to join the Growing Future Farmers programme. I always wanted to learn to share from when I was a really little kid and watching my granddad share when I was growing up and just watching the sharers. So learning how to share has been probably my biggest highlight so far and another thing is probably the dogs, training dogs. I've had dogs before, they were never that flash, so it's been really cool to get some dogs to the point where they can actually do some work and do it well. Mark's pretty cruisy, he can be hands-on but he also likes to leave you to learn by yourself at points like when you need to, so he'll kind of let you do it and if you're doing it wrong obviously he'll step in and help you or if he thinks that you could be doing it differently or something that might help you he'll just step in and help you along. But yeah he's a really great person to learn from, really easy going. So within Growing Future Farmers we have to do certain practical assignments. You have to pass both the theory and also the practical side of things to be able to get your certificate. When I graduate I'm planning on going home to my family farm so I'll be working alongside my granddad and my uncle which I'm pretty excited for. It's kind of a dream of mine so I'm really looking forward to it. I think if you're really keen on farming it's a great idea. There's other things out there like other cadetships but Growing Future Farmers is really widespread across the country so you won't ever have to go too far from home depending on where you're from. I would say it's a great course. It's really been great for me. It's probably two of the best years I've ever had so I'd definitely recommend it if you're keen on farming. Jess came through the programme in November 24 when we hired her in December. I had an open position for Experience Shepherd. At that time she was a student at Waimai Romney. She was working underneath Tom Lilly. Tom rung me up and said Jess was looking for a next part after GFF. So I was a little bit hesitant on taking her on after being maybe not so experienced. But Tom talked her up and I said I'd give her a shot and my doubts disappeared pretty quick. Soon as she got on farm I could see she was ready for the next step so that's when we hired her and went from there. Get up. A girl at my uncle's farm told me about the cadetship programmes. I just searched them up and this one was open and I looked at it and it looked good and decided to come on it. I was definitely interested more in sheep side and with dogs. I thought it'd be really cool to learn how to train a dog and know how to work them. So I did two years of GFF at Ellis Reef Farm just down the road and I've been here a year and a half now. I arrived to Kaukonga with four dogs and I now have six and a pet. And yeah it's been good. I've got two pups and four working. It's good dog work. It's a beautiful location like you can't beat it with the coast. Great team of people here working. Yeah it's just an overall real nice place to work. It's definitely a really good way to get into farming. I had no chance of getting into farming unless I had done Growing Future Farmers so it gives people who didn't have the opportunity to get into farming an opportunity. I'm doing the level four programme through GFF and I'm hopefully doing level five through primary ITO or something. Going into more of a management role or yeah just working my way up from here I guess. We've got that farm trainer interest day coming up that you guys are so kindly hosting. Are you able to pop along to that? I think if we have year ones we'll have a few farm trainers if that's available. We'll get year two students and if we can have some graduates as well. Do you have much interest at the moment? There is. From my point of view the scheme really helps young people into the industry. Gives them an insight into the industry and a solid grounding as well. Yeah we try to get them when they first come on is their skill sets, life skills so we start with all of those machinery so they're working with that. Max and Jess have clear yeah they do have the right attitude and the mindset. That's the biggest thing the right mindset so that's a massive difference. If you've got the right mindset you can pretty much put your mind to most things and get it done.