IHC calf scheme Initiative celebrates 40 years of donations

Farmers help make dream a reality

ByGerald Piddock

All Karen Chapman ever wanted to do was milk cows.

Her dream looked pretty hopeless after her dad Noel Chapman, a sharemilker at Otaua in North Waikato, died while she was still a teenager and she and her mum Olive shifted into Pukekohe.

Then, in a double tragedy, her mother died suddenly too, and Karen moved into IHC residential care.

But once they knew of her love of dairy farming, local farmers welcomed Chapman into their milking sheds.

She has been supported by a network of dairy farmers in and around Pukekohe, many of them participants in the IHC Calf & Rural Scheme fundraising scheme, who raise animals and donate the proceeds to IHC.

Chapman has milked all over the northern Waikato and South Auckland districts. A long-time family friend Glen Lee has driven her around the farms for as long as anyone can remember.

Chapman says she is “a good friend to me, I have known her for a long, long time”.

Lee would call farmers to see if Chapman could visit.

“It seemed to work best with the Goodwrights,” Chapman says.

Chapman says she used to help her dad milk around 100 Friesian-Jerseycross cows after school. Now she is milking cows on farms with bigger herds and more complex and automated rotary cow sheds.

“I have been doing it for a long time now,” she says.

She has also milked for Syd and Jenny Goodwright. These days their son Tom farms the home farm and Karen milks for their daughter Becky Payne and her husband Mike on their farm not far away.

Another sister Hannah farms close by too, with her husband Trevor Turner. All of them are donors to the IHC Calf & Rural Scheme and know Chapman well.

The Goodwrights have been donating calves – real and virtual – to the Calf Scheme for more than 30 years and for half of that time Jenny Goodwright has worked as a canvasser for the scheme, visiting around 50 local farmers each season to encourage them to pledge calves.

“I am really lucky because I have got a lot of farmers in the district like me who want to keep supporting the Calf Scheme. How lucky are we that we have had four children and 15 grandchildren who have no disabilities,” Goodwright says.

This year, the IHC Calf & Rural Scheme marks its 40th anniversary by celebrating all the farmers who have made lives better for people with intellectual disabilities in their communities. Over those 40 years, the scheme has raised $40 million.

IHC national fundraising manager Greg Millar says the scheme gives IHC an important connection to the rural sector and has evolved along with changes to the sector over 40 years, particularly as smaller farms and local relationships have given way to larger dairy units.

Legendary All Black Sir Colin Meads, a Waikato beef farmer and staunch supporter of the Calf Scheme, encouraged beef and sheep farmers to get involved too.

“He first threw his weight behind IHC when he stopped playing rugby, and we were privileged to have had the backing of the big man from 1974 for more than 40 years until his death in 2017,” Millar says.

More than 10,000 dairy farmers have supported their communities over many years through this unique fundraiser.

And as technology advanced on to farms, farmers began profiling their favourite cows and best milkers on social media and can now donate virtual animals along with the real ones.

“We are incredibly grateful to the many farmers who have supported us over the years – some of them down through generations,” he says.

“We’re also enormously thankful for the partnerships with our sponsors – PGG Wrightson who has been with us from the start and VW who provides us with Amarok vehicles and is matching donations from the public, dollar for dollar, this week.” n

Support from a network of local farmer’s has allowed Karen Chapman to do the job she loves – milking cows.

Co-op takes virtual tour to the world

ByGerald Piddock

Fonterra has created an online virtual platform to help people get a better understanding of how its products are created and distributed around the world.

Called Visit Fonterra, the online farmto-plate experience allows users to take an immersive tour of Fonterra’s unique supply chain.

The initiative came about because of the visitor restrictions Fonterra introduced on its sites because of covid-19, Fonterra senior co-operative experience manager Ian Rodney said.

“Our team have a long history of hosting thousands of visitors annually, all eager to understand the stories that sit behind our much-loved products, ingredients, and brands.

“Covid-19 brought an immediate halt to Fonterra’s visitor programme, providing us with an interesting challenge.

“If we can’t bring our customers to the co-operative, how do we take the cooperative to our customers?” he said.

Visit Fonterra takes people on a virtual tour along the supply chain, through the farms, milk collection, manufacturing, distribution and export.

The new tool also opens up the New Zealand provenance story to global audiences.

“Visit Fonterra delivers a solution that will extend well beyond travel restrictions – with it being digital, it will allow much broader audiences to experience New Zealand and the co-op, well beyond those that have historically been able to visit physically,” Rodney said.

“Only about 2% of the Fonterra customer base make it to Aotearoa. So, Visit Fonterra allows many more of our customers, and actually anyone who’s interested in what we do, to experience the co-op.”

Visit Fonterra captures the spirit of the co-operative, which are its people.

You get to meet the faces that take New Zealand dairy from grass to glass, with features from farming families, tanker drivers and lab technicians, he said.

Since its launch in early April, Fonterra had more than 1200 users view the site from 46 countries.

In comparison, in the year before covid, Fonterra physically hosted just under 1700 international visitors. n

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Visit Fonterra can be found on the company’s website.

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