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March 2022 Edition
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Finally: At his fourth and final attempt Canterbury dairy farmer Jonny Brown has taken out the Tasman regional final of the Young Farmer of the Year competition and will head to the national final in July.
If you don’t succeed at first It was fourth and final time lucky for Tasman FMG Young Farmer of the Year, Jonny Brown from the Dunsandel Young Farmer’s club.
] by Kent caddick The 31 year old dairy farm manager took out the Tasman title at the regional final in Springston to qualify for this year’s Grand Final in season 54 of the long-running competition. Deer and dairy farmer Andrew Allan, 21, was runner up, while Lincoln University student Archie Woodhouse, 20, came in third place. Brown manages a dairy farm for Dairy Holdings Ltd which milks 1,300 cows and said he was struggling to comprehend the win.
“Each year my preparation hasn’t been great so I need to rectify that for Grand Final,” he said. The father of two has struggled in previous years with the head to heads, naming that aspect of the contest his biggest challenge. “I’m not creative at all so I have to figure it out. Luckily the young pups didn’t know my weakness so I managed to pick up a few good points by finishing first with a pretty horrible chair and putting some pressure on the others.” Extremely passionate about the dairy industry, Jonny has spent his career working
through the ranks of dairying, contract milking and farm management mainly around Canterbury since graduating Lincoln University with a Bachelor of Agricultural Commerce and Land Valuation. Looking ahead to Grand Final in Whangarei in July, Brown said he will be utilising his friends to test him on all aspects of the primary industries. “There’s a lot of hard work ahead, I’m going to have to polish up on a lot of things,” he said.
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