| 97 nzdairy “Having all your eggs in one basket is not good for the farmer or the community. We’ve been so focussed on a simple repeatable system for so long now we’ve totally lost sight of that opportunity.” DAIRY PEOPLE CANTERBURY » Rhys Roberts Rhys Roberts believes policy pressure from New Zealand dairy farmers will come in the form of tax receipts. Photo: Johnny Houston. Covid-19 exposed holes and raised anxiety levels When Covid-19 hit, more than half of Align Farms’ 30 staff were on international work visas. The Mid Canterbury operation includes eight properties (six dairy farms with two support farms) milking 5000 cows on just under 1900 hectares at Wester eld. While it had close to 70% of its workforce test positive over six to eight weeks, the more concerning impact for its Chief Executive Of cer and Director, Rhys Roberts, was the anxiety levels among its internationals. “We never went into Covid with a strategy to stop it coming into the business, we just wanted to stop it spreading too far at one particular time,” Rhys said. “We went pretty early with testing twice-aweek. “It was tough, because you do need to make sure that people are resting and taking adequate care of themselves. But we have farms with 1000 cows on that need adequate care as well. It was just about trying to leverage our strengths to support them. “Some of our team came from India and when it was really bad there, it was pretty tough on them. 5% in solar farming. Having all your eggs in one basket is not good for the farmer or the community. We’ve been so focussed on a simple repeatable system for so long now we’ve totally lost sight of that opportunity. While we do see different farm uses in Mid Canterbury, we don’t often see them on the one farm.” “Do our kids really want seven permanent houses and a $2 million cowshed? It’s probably best to reduce debt, run our assets down, and give them the opportunity to diversify or de-intensify – rather than handing them a business which is so geared up that they have to keep milking every last bit of the farm. I’m not saying run every asset down, but we should be looking at this area and saying, ‘What is the farm of the future’?” Rhys is happy to nd the happy medium within the opportunities he’s listed, but he isn’t backing away from his thoughts. “I probably accept that some readers will have already found problems to my possible solutions, but that’s probably my point. “There’s too many problems and not enough solutions in this world.” We have a programme that monitors stress and anxiety in the business, and we saw quite a sharp incline through that time.” He said he also noticed it had been hard for their Kiwi workmates to empathise. “Because all the Kiwis weren’t really experiencing anything in New Zealand, while whole families of some of our international team members had it, it was challenging for them to relate to.” Align Farms recently helped one of its team achieve New Zealand residency, and it remains committed to that. But it has since dropped its reliance on international staff from 17 to seven. “If this is the world, we’re living in now we need to be more mindful of people coming into the country. We must make sure we can keep them safe and secure and engaged with their families.” To that end Align Farms will start to consider New Zealand staff members more proactively. “We will look after the current international staff within our business and absolutely do whatever we can to get them through to residency and to reach their goals. But we will do that rst, before we start to looking to bring anyone else in.”
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