Winner celebrates farm milestone

A fourth generation farmer exporting meat for burger patties to the United States has been named Marlborough’s top farmer, shortly after his farm turned 100.

Fraser Avery says he is thrilled to be recognised for his efforts on the Bonavaree farm, in Grassmere, southeast of Blenheim, in this year’s Westpac Bayleys Marlborough Sheep and Beef Award.

The award has coincided with the 2600-hectare farm’s centenary, established by Avery’s great-grandparents as a sheep and beef farm in Marlborough’s early days.

‘‘I always entered competitions for two things; one is to learn and one to win. But this time I did it for a third reason, to have the opportunity to promote and talk to other farmers about getting out and telling their positive stories,’’ Avery said.

Avery, who was also Beef and Lamb Northern South Island farmer council vice president, said he felt farmers had been getting a bad rap lately, so it was good to celebrate agriculture for a change.

‘‘I am proud to be a farmer and I am also very passionate about it,’’ he said.

‘‘We are not big on farming here [in Marlborough], but we have really high achieving farmers in this area so it is quite good to have competitions like the Marlborough farmer of the year, to recognise the people who are doing really well.’’

The award is divided into five categories, with 25 per cent each on financial performance, environment awareness, and animal performance and 12.5 per cent each on business governance and community involvement.

The farm has 4800 breeding ewes with 1300 hoggets, 1500 cows and some old breeding cows.

Most of the cattle meat was exported to the United States and made into burger patties, while the sheep wool was sold to a local buyer in Blenheim. Lambs from Avery’s farm were sold to Nelson Meatworks.

The farming season is divided into three periods of the year Avery said, Christmas through to mid-february being a high-risk period, March to August, a recovery period and August to December being a revenue period.

During summer, low rainfall and hot wind makes farming difficult because it dries up the moisture contained in the soil which would make growing ‘‘dry matter’’ difficult. In autumn and winter, farmers try different methods to increase and recover the amount of moisture in the soil to grow the maximum amount of dry matter which gets fed to the animals.

From spring to early summer, animals are fattened to their maximum size, so when they do get sold for Christmas, farmers have the chance to generate as much revenue as they can.

Half of Avery’s farm was opportunity stock which gets sold and the remaining 50 per cent were capital stock which stay on the farm throughout the year.

Nine years earlier in 2010, Avery won the South Island farmer of the year.

‘‘Marlborough farmer of the year is a fairly new competition, because we didn’t have anything specific to this region,’’ he said.