20 Apr 2018

Farmers of the future

From Country Life, 9:30 pm on 20 April 2018

Hundreds of children around the country are competing in the AgriKids NZ and TeenAg regional finals this month.

New Zealand Young Farmers runs the competitions to promote the fun side of farming in the hope that one day, the kids will consider it as a career.  

"The whole idea is to give these kids an idea of the different opportunities and skill sets that they may need, so we try as be as diverse as possible and touch on as many of the sectors within primary industries as we can," says competition coordinator David Highsted.

Challenges included judging sheep, fixing fences, riparian planting, putting together a shearing hand-piece and measuring deer antlers.

Twenty-four AgriKids teams and forty-four TeenAg teams took part in the Tasman regional final in Templeton on the outskirts of Christchurch.

Hillary Cooper, James Crawford & Flynn Shore from Oxford Area School came first in the AgriKids event, and St Bede's College students Angus Grant & Nick O'Çonnor were the top TeenAg team.

The winning teams from all the regional finals will head to Invercargill in July for the grand finale.