by Rebecca Flannery
We catch up with David Acland, the new president of Federated Farmers Mid-Canterbury…
What is your farming background?
I’ve taken over the family farm that my father purchased in 1983 when he moved here to Mt Somers from Mt Peel after being in partnership with his brother there. So that was a sixth-generation family farm, and Mt Somers is second generation. The family took up the Mt Peel property in 1856 when we first ventured to New Zealand, so we do have a connection to the land – we haven’t ventured too far!
Tell us about your own personal farming journey…
I never saw myself in a city. I did consider the military – it was either that or farming. My father was 35 when I was born; I always wanted to farm with him. So, I came back to the farm in 2002 after studying agriculture science at university and some travel, and we bought the neighbouring property. Mt Somers Station is a sheep, beef and dairy operation with a full-time staff of 12 and seasonal staff of around 15 people.
Our goals are to farm within our boundaries, so not to import feed. We try to rear all our calves out of our own dairy system, and we have a breeding finishing policy within the lamb and sheep business where we also store stock with wool. Six years ago, my wife Kate set up our own lamb’s wool blankets venture – we produce a couple of 1000 of those a year. Kate also sits on the Beef + Lamb board and prior to moving to Mt Somers had set up a winery in Blenheim. Our Sugarloaf Wines winery has a staff of six and processes 1000 tonnes of grapes a year. On top of that we have a café and general store.
What do you hope to achieve as provincial president?
I just hope to get more people engaged. We’ve got a really strong executive in Mid Canterbury now, we’re a good province for Feds. We need to get those younger people coming through, engaging with the Federation and getting involved in the different sections. That’s my goal. I think we can achieve this with more meetings online, that has seen a great uptake. The cost to travel into town for an evening meeting is becoming prohibitive. We’ll probably just try and shake it up, do one or two online meetings and one in town; there’s still huge value in face-to-face meetings.
What are your top three issues?
Mid Canterbury’s issues are going to be with the NPS and freshwater, we need to be revisiting the regional plan. That’s the big one for us. HWEN has been signed off and handed to government but there’s still the legislative process to go. So, there’s going be submissions and then that side of things to try and keep it where that was destined to be without getting bastardised too much. And then there’s the drinking water standards and supplies and how that’s going to affect regional New Zealand with regards to consent and water rights.
Do you think that central government really understands farming?
To a degree. But you’ve got to remember how big we are within the pool of voters. We’re only the size of one electorate really. It’s not like the old days where the chair of the Wool Board and the chair of the Meat Board could go and sit down in the prime minister’s office and say, ‘right, here are our issues, and here are the solutions’. That doesn’t work any more.