DAIRY CHAMPION
Meeting NZ’s needs By Ross Nolly
Hard times can hit the best of us and at any time, but two initiatives launched by two dairy farmers will ensure no one goes hungry.
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s we sail through life, we all wish for flat seas and fair winds, which is what we often get, but that can change in an instant. It only takes an unexpected life crisis or major expense to throw us a curveball. During trying times it’s comforting to know that someone is around to “have your back”. Two New Zealand farmers, Wayne Langford and Siobhan O’Malley, have recently started two charities that will indeed have people’s back when misfortune rears its ugly head. Wayne and his wife Tyler are dairy farmers from Golden Bay, milking 230 cows once-a-day on their 93 hectare farm. Siobhan and her husband Christopher are 50:50 sharemilkers, milking 400 cows on their 242ha farm at Kokatai on the West Coast. During 2020, Wayne donated mince to a foodbank as part of his YOLO Farmer journey daily challenges. Each day he looks to accomplish something to say that he’s lived for that day. On seeing how little meat was needed to feed his local community, it prompted him to create a charity to help those in need. In the midst of the 2020 covid-19 lockdown, Langford started Meat the Need. Meat the Need is a nationally-based charity designed to supply much-needed meat to City Missions and foodbanks. The meat is donated by farmers, processed, packed and delivered to those in need. To date, the charity has processed more than 883 animals and provided 408,783 meals to hungry Kiwis. Meat the Need aims to double its achievements and deliver nearly one million meals in its second year. “I was speaking at a Christchurch conference and there happened to be a Silver Fern Farms representative in the crowd who told me it was something they’d like to be a part of. It would have been a very difficult programme to implement without a significant national
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Dairy farmers Siobhan O’Malley and Wayne Langford joined forces to create the Meat the Need and Feed Out charities in which farms donate meat and milk to foodbanks and City Missions.
processor on board.” Wayne says. “MPI provided funding to help us get up and going for the first three years. I think the Government recognised that we’re the best people to be working in this space. “I think they’re achieving a fantastic result from the money they’ve invested and we’re only just getting started. We also received help from DairyNZ, Beef + Lamb and Federated Farmers to build awareness.” He underestimated the food safety requirements needed to supply meat to foodbanks. It was never going to be a case of getting the local butcher of a home-kill business to process the meat and the local Young Farmers Club to bag it up. They needed Silver Fern Farms’ expertise to guide them through that process. As dairy farmers, they began considering whether they could start a
similar charity for donated milk. In 2020 they received government funding to set up a dairy supply along the same lines as Meat the Need. Their Feed Out charity arose from that initiative. “I contacted a number of milk suppliers. It only took one phone call to the Māori-owned Miraka milk company to receive a resounding ‘yes’. Miraka farmers donate the milk and the company processes it,” Siobhan says. Wayne feels that one key to the project’s success is that everyone involved from the farm to the foodbank are donating their produce or services. It is significantly different to previous models. “Feed Out is an extension of Meat the Need. When it was launched there were a number of farmers who wanted to donate milk. So far, we’ve had 22,000l of milk donated, which is awesome. But to
DAIRY FARMER
September 2021
