Our Way of Life /
Farming with resilience in North Canterbury
Having dealt with earthquakes, a crippling drought and a frustrating experience of Ministry for Primary Industries’ response to the cattle disease Mycoplasma bovis, the Stevensons are an outstanding example of the true meaning of resilience: the ability to get back up after being knocked down by those challenges, and using the lessons learned to strengthen their farming business and their community.
In New Zealand agriculture, the term ‘resilience’ and ‘farming’ are often mentioned in the same breath. The tenacity required by farmers to meet financial, legislative, environmental and bureaucratic challenges whilst attempting to manage (and sometimes endure) public perception, crosses all aspects of primary industry – challenges Cheviot farmers Mark and Joanne Stevenson are all too well aware of.
The Stevensons’ property The Gums is a picturesque, undulating 920-hectare property Mark and Joanne farm in partnership with Mark’s parents Ian and Trish, who purchased the property in 2003, moving from a farm in Fernside. The Stevensons’ operation is centred around fine woolled sheep and beef cattle, as well as a successful sheep breeding stud, something that has been a family business for over 115 years. ‘Some of our relationships with ram clients go back in excess of 60 years and cross multiple generations,’ Mark says.
‘Today we breed rams across five breeds – Poll Merino, Quarterbred, Halfbred, Dorset Down and South Dorset Down. I guess you could say we are diversified in sheep. In the meat-focused breeds, we focus on animals that produce lambs that grow well through the spring, allowing farmers to destock prior to the summer heat and dry setting in. This allows them to best match the feed demands of stock to the capacity of their environment and climate.’ The family hold an on-farm ram sale every year in early December, and in 2019 offered around 200 for sale.
While farming has been in Mark’s blood for generations, Joanne, who grew up on the north side of Chicago in America’s Midwest, had never set foot on a farm until she met Mark. The couple met in 2003 whilst both studying at the University of Illinois. ‘Mark was coaching the University’s women’s rugby club. I joined the team on a whim,’ she says. ‘We hit it off, did a lot of long-distance and travelling for a few years and were finally married in 2008. We moved to NZ in 2010 a few months before the Christchurch earthquake.’
Before moving to New Zealand, Joanne had completed a master’s degree at the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina, studying the effects of Hurricane Katrina on coastal Mississippi. This experience meant that when the earthquake struck, Joanne was launched into more research around disaster and resilience, which ultimately led to Joanne completing a fully funded PhD at the University of Canterbury, studying how businesses used their networks to recover from disasters.
This experience proved incredibly important when the North Canterbury region was struck by a three-year drought in 2014, allowing Joanne to use that knowledge and experience to make a real difference in helping farmers survive and thrive whilst dealing with such an extreme and relentless event. ‘Following the drought and earthquakes in North Canterbury, there was funding around to help the affected communities. People who were involved in the response and economic recovery from these events were worried that farmers in the region were beginning to feel beaten down. Some people were in survival mode, just trying to get through another season, and not thinking strategically about the future,’ Joanne says.
‘I worked with the Post-Quake Farming Project team and my colleagues at Resilient Organisations to develop a workshop that would give farmers some time and tools to identify their resilience strengths and weaknesses; work through challenging scenarios facing their businesses, and to actually develop a mini plan of attack for an issue they were facing in their business.’
As well as Joanne’s work around resilience, she is also on the committee of two key farming groups: Rural Advocacy
Network (RAN) and Proud to be a Farmer NZ. ‘RAN as a group tries to represent farmers’ and rural communities’ interests with governing bodies and the public – putting in submissions on relevant legislation, meeting with Environment Canterbury and district councils about issues that farmers are facing and presenting a strong rural voice in public forums wherever we can.
‘RAN recognised the need to boost the morale of farmers in New Zealand who feel unsupported by the general public and under attack in the media, despite being at the forefront of many of the efforts to create a sustainable economy, vibrant regions, and a healthy environment. This led to the creation of Proud to Be a Farmer – a movement designed to tell positive farming stories in public forums; that celebrates the successes and hard work of people in the primary sector, while giving farmers a space to be proud of all the positives we bring to our communities and the country.’
Last year, the Stevenson resilience was tested yet again when they were caught up in the Mycoplasma bovis (M. bovis) response. Despite no cattle on The Gums being infected with the disease, the Stevensons experienced the full force of the notoriously poor management of disease by MPI. ‘We became involved in the M. bovis response via a trace on bulls we purchased from Canterbury Park on 10 October 2017,’ explains Mark.
‘In March 2018 this was proven to be an incorrect trace by a key staff member in the Ashburton response office. The source property for those bulls became infected via some heifers they brought onto their farm during the week of 16 October 2017 – a week after the bulls we purchased had left their farm. So at no time were the bulls and heifers on the same farm or had risk of being exposed to the disease.’
After fighting MPI , dealing with false information and poor communication, and with their annual ram sale which was critical to their farming business on the horizon, the Stevensons were forced to make the heart-breaking decision to cull 158 perfectly healthy cattle, all of which came back
The Stevensons’ operation is centred around fine woolled sheep and beef cattle, as well as a successful sheep breeding stud, something that has been a family business for over 115 years.
clear for M. bovis at slaughter. ‘We could not afford to wait for test results and MPI’s timelines and expose ourselves and our farm business to further poor decision making and management by MPI. It was clear that they didn’t get that they were playing with people’s lives and livelihoods. We made the call to send all remaining cattle on the property to slaughter in early September. We did this in order to protect our ram selling business and ram clients’ source of genetics. We had a plan to not bring any cattle on-farm for at least 60 days after that, so there was no risk of infection,’ shares Mark. ‘We were then positioned, should MPI find us infected, to be through a 60-day stand-down and disinfection process by the start of November and all clean in time for the ram sale.’
Mark and Joanne’s children Ted (four) and Lewis (who will be one in May) have been a ray of light in the challenging times they have had to face over the past few years. Ted was born with Down syndrome, and is a happy and bright little boy who delights in everything around him, and loves being on the farm. ‘Ted arrived and did everything at his own pace,’ recalls Joanne with a smile. ‘He didn’t achieve his development milestones as fast as my friends’ kids and I learned to stop comparing. I guess he taught me that there is no winning at life. There’s just life and it’s there to be enjoyed at whatever pace is right for you. He’s a farm boy through and through – so I fully expect him to be part of the family business when he’s grown.’
The farming business will no doubt face more hurdles in the future, but the Stevensons are prepared for whatever may come their way. ‘Resilience is the ability to survive a crisis and thrive in an environment of uncertainty. You have to work it into how you think about everything,’ concludes Joanne. ‘Resilience, to us, means having a vision but being flexible about how you get there, because life is never a straight line. It also means facing up to the challenges that we see coming down the road and looking for the opportunities when crisis does inevitably strike – even if that opportunity is to learn from your mistakes and do better next time.’
‘Resilience is the ability to survive a crisis and thrive in an environment of uncertainty. You have
to work it into how you think about everything.’