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On Farm Story
FARMERS WEEKLY – farmersweekly.co.nz – April 4, 2022
Nursing native forests A Cambridge farmer built his nursery business model around lowering the barriers for farmers to plant more trees. He spoke to Gerald Piddock.
F
OR Adam Thompson, establishing native flora on farmland goes beyond the obvious environmental and biodiversity benefits. It gives farmers a sense of pride in seeing a piece of marginal, unproductive land transformed into something that complements and enhances their farming operation. “A lot of farmers are proud of growing food. We’re helping them do it in a more sustainable way,” Thompson said. The 35-year-old Cambridge farmer and owner of Restore Native tree nursery wants all farmers to feel that pride by making it as easy and inexpensive as possible to plant and grow native trees on farmland not suited for livestock. The nursery specialises in all native trees and all firstgeneration colonisers like mānuka, kānuka, cabbage trees and flaxes. These species create a canopy, creating favourable growing conditions for larger tree species such as kahikatea and rimu to then get established. It also gives farmers a better connection with consumers particularly as social media breaks down barriers between them and customers. “It makes you happier going to work every day,” he said. “You see the mana of that land come back with the trees and then the birds come back and they bring more seeds that create a forest.” Thompson said he built the nursery business model around lowering the barriers for farmers to plant more trees. These barriers could be financial, being time-poor, or lacking the knowledge of what
species to plant to reflect the type of work the farmer needs. Tree survival is also a barrier, particularly in its first year of growth and Thompson and his staff offer a maintenance service to ensure its survival in that early stage. He also supplies plants for riparian development, which has helped with on-farm wetland development and employs a planting crew of eight to assist landowners with getting the trees in the ground. “There’s been some really cool projects. When you see farmers – especially older farmers – who have grazed cattle to the edge of a waterway all of their lives and now they are fencing it and planting,” he said.
You see the mana of that land come back with the trees and then the birds come back and they bring more seeds that create a forest. Adam Thompson Farmer “You do it for two or three years and you go back and see it and it’s just awesome.” Thompson grew up on a farm in Matamata, Waikato. He left school and worked as a fencer for an agricultural contractor and remained committed to the outdoors and bush areas through hiking and hunting. He then started chasing money to save and purchase farmland in his 20s when he accepted an internship as a mortgage
GROWING BUSINESS: Adam Thompson at te Miro, near Cambridge. His passion for native trees came from his wish to see more birds and other wildlife in the forest, which led him to start Restore Native nursery. Photos: Stephen Barker
broker for residential property. That eventually led to him starting his own business, My Mortgage, which employs 12 people and has been operating just over 10 years. These days, he works 5-10 hours a week at the mortgage business, mostly as an advisor, as he looks to dedicate more time to the nursery and his farm. His passion for native trees came from his wish to see more birds and other wildlife in the forest. “I started planting trees in the lifestyle block I had when I was young. I learned more and more about the relationship between the birds and the trees and the land and how it’s symbiotic,” he said. He started planting trees when he was 20 and kept at it over the
MIX: The farm is a mix of rolling to steep hills, with 150ha of it being effective. Included in the effective land is a separate 12ha block used to grow his in-calf heifers.
years as he brought, improved and then sold lifestyle land at Tirau and Maungakawa, before purchasing a 200-hectare farm near Cambridge in 2018. The cost of buying trees saw him begin to grow his own to finance his passion. “It never started out as a business and I probably spent the best part of 10 years growing trees for myself,” he said. Thompson learned to grow the trees by trial and error and by 2019 he was growing around 20,000 tree saplings in a makeshift nursery and he started approaching friends and neighbours to see if they were interested in buying his surplus plants. In that same year, he completed the purchase of the farm. Then the covid-19 lockdown hit the country. “I thought there was no future in mortgage broking and property will tank – I was wrong,” he said. He upscaled the nursery to
grow 250,000 plants and decided to focus on it because that was where his passion was and formally established Restore Native. Since then, it has expanded further to 500,000 trees, employing five staff and a farm manager. By 2023, he hopes to have over one million trees for farmers to purchase. He also stepped back from his role as a mortgage adviser for family reasons. It allows him opportunities to spend more time on the farm and the nursery with his two young children. Working with trees and bush has also fuelled his interest in predator control and Thompson is a trustee of Predator Free Cambridge. Once a month, his staff do predator control work in the district to reduce damage from possums and rats. Thompson said the nursery is not driven by profit but by seeing positive change in farming. If it was purely about making
HERD: The farm runs dairy-beef breeding cows mated with Charolais and Speckle Park genetics.
