Welcome to The Royal A&P Show 2018

Good evening Mr President, I would also like to introduce members of the RAS Executive here this evening, Vice President, Brent Snellex from Rangiora, Kelly Allison from the deep south and Cara O'Connor who has been  equestrian judging all day and unable to be with us this evening.The RAS CEO, Debbie Cameron is also attending the show.

The Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand is the umbrella group for the 97 A&P Shows and 65 Breed & Kindred Societies in New Zealand. It is also one of the oldest organisations in NZ, with its own Act of Parliament and Royal Charter.

Yoda, the Star Wars Jedi Master so prophetical said, “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”

That is certainly the case with the Agricultural economy.

Gene editing technology has highlighted some benefits it could bring to agriculture,  such as removing allergy causing compounds in cow’s milk; disease proofing Manuka honey; speeding up apple variety selection; significantly reducing pest levels and shortening the time to market for developing new crops.

The Agri-Science community is, without doubt, an exciting place to be.

It is also great to see the launch by the Red Meat Profit Partnership, of the Key Performance Indicators booklet with 16 core KPIs to help farmers measure their business performance.

And on a more basic note, experience based observations such as that revealed by Steve Wynn-Harris in a recent Farmers Weekly. He disclosed that at 60 he isn’t fast enough to catch stud lambs to tag.

He has taken to using a fishing net to catch them. The net, apparently, is also handy for popping over one of the triplet lambs and standing on the handle while he deals with the siblings.

Innovation drives growth and unearths opportunities. From this gamut of innovation, development and practical experience we must remember the community in which we live and to whom we sell.

We must be aware of the issues of environment; animal well-being; nutrition; ethical and sustainable production; how red meat is being produced; and evolving consumer expectations and concerns.

We should not be allowing the Vegan Lobby under the guise of animal welfare to dictate the negative and biased establishment media agenda.

We have not been doing a good job of anticipating or responding to those issues. Therefore many people are misinformed about farming. Young people, the next generation of consumers, have their own expectations. Many urban kids have no idea there is a whole other world outside their suburb. It is easier for them, and their parents, to absorb click bait headlines adorned with emotion than it is to read in-depth articles that pursue the evidence.

We need to take everyone with us & leave no-one behind!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need A&P Shows.

Over the 26 week season there will be 97 of them quite literally from one end of the country to the other.

These Shows are a unique, marketing, educative, relationship building machine that no one business could ever dream of recreating to promote their interest. The A&P platform provides fun; opportunities for hands on; asking questions without feeling intimidated and to get a positive and good understanding of our industry.

Shows are important to illustrate reality at a glance.

And what is more, this promotional machine comes with a huge voluntary and sponsor support network.

Mr President, thanks to you and your great Hawkes Bay A&P team here at the Showgrounds Hawkes Bay Tomoana, your generous sponsors and volunteers, for getting together to create something special, The New Zealand Royal A&P Show 2018, the flagship event of the 97 Show network.

Hopefully many agriculturally vested interest groups recognise this amazing opportunity to showcase; to tell the story; to create the news; and to engage with the wider and influential urbanised community.

Finally, Mr President, I am pleased to advise you that the Executive of the Royal Agricultural Society have awarded the Hawkes Bay A&P the right to host a Royal A&P Show for the next three years. We are most grateful for the work you have done for the brand and we wish you all the best for the future.

 

 

The T2 Driving Schmucks Club

Each morning I access the motorway at Karaka to join many others for a while on the way to my office.

The  on ramp is divided into three lanes, all clearly signed for purpose. Two of them are for folk like me, one person per vehicle. We have to queue up and our access to the motorway is controlled by a set of traffic lights which moderate the traffic to hopefully improve traffic flow. A third lane on the left is reserved for heavy or commercial vehicles (over 3.5 tonne) and vehicles with 2 or more passengers. Their flow onto the motorway is not hindered by traffic lights.

I have noticed that apparently there are some exceptions to the T2 rules. Some vehicles which have only one driver, or are a ute under 3.5 tonnes, have the right to use this lane they would not otherwise qualify for. Using this lane puts them up to 20-30 vehicles ahead in the queue. Use doesn’t seem to be universal though, for example, not all utes with one person on board get to use the lane.

This would be a club worth belonging to.

It is frustrating when you have observed all the rules, worked your way to the head of the queue, to have a vehicle like AKA6**, with one person, come swooping up on your inside to nudge their way ahead of you into the next queue.

So how do I get to belong to this club? Initially I assumed they were some kind of emergency worker required immediately somewhere to save a life or prevent a domestic flight hi-jacking, but apparently not.

In a community like ours, if you don’t know something you do not have to ask too many people to get the right connection. And I know a person or two who know stuff. But to my complete surprise I could find not a single person who knew how to get membership to this special and privileged club.

I had contemplated hopping out of my car and asking the driver of AKA6**., after all he had a sign on the tailgate window of his station wagon which read ‘Intelligent Protection System’, but no he was off on his next busy move.

I had given up ever finding out how I could become a member of this club and gain such a traffic advantage. That was until I ended up sitting next to an older chap having a coffee at Mangere Bridge Village. We were chatting away and I raised this subject then asked him if, by chance, he knew anything about this club.

I was quite unprepared for his very enthusiastic revelation in response. Thank goodness I wasn’t sitting across from him otherwise I would have been showered by a mouthful of Chai Latte (without sugar)!

That was followed by a burst of words, many of which I wouldn’t normally use and from what others tell me, are not printable. But I did pick up what I thought was a key word in my search for the club – ‘Schmucks!’

Success!  Finally, a vital word clue in my search for membership of this special and exclusive club. So I am off to chat with another friend, Mr Google, to find out more about this ‘T2 Driving Schmucks Club’. I’ll let you know how I get on.

 

First published in the Franklin County News on 27th September 2018