HAWKE’S BAY/WAIRARAPA | SHARE FARMER OF THE YEAR
YouTube research kickstarted career WORDS BY JACKIE HARRIGAN PHOTOS BY: BRAD HANSON
M
anoj Kumar decided to go dairy farming after researching the industry on YouTube, as a recent migrant to New Zealand with English as his second language. Ten years later he and his younger brother Sumit have won the Share Farmer of the Year for the Hawkes Bay/ Wairarapa region in the 2021 DIA awards. The brothers are 50/50 sharemilkers on Andrew and Monika Arbuthnott’s, 285cow Eketahuna property and also on Geoff Arends and Ester Romp’s 465-cow property. Both Manoj and Sumit have entered the Awards previously, with Sumit placing third in the 2018 Hawkes Bay/Wairarapa Dairy Manager category.
FROM RURAL DELHI TO PAHIATUA Manoj, now 34, came to the Bay of Plenty as a horticultural worker in 2010 but he has a Bachelor in Agriculture from India. The brothers hail from a small village in northern India near Delhi where their parents have a small 10ha farm, with goats, 80
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chickens and a few buffalos and cows for home milk supply. Sharemilking 50% “I noticed lots and lots of cows around the region when I came to Gross farm income $4.32/kg MS New Zealand so I wanted to learn Operating expenses $2.37/kg MS more about them and about the Operating profit $2894/ha industry - how does it work?” “So I started searching on Farm working expenses $2.25/kg MS YouTube,” he said. Animal health Animal health: $97/cow What he learned was that the Breeding: $61/cow New Zealand dairy farming system is totally different from back home in India and there is potential to build your told Manoj he was capable of stepping own business and end up owning land. up. Sumit came to work for him as a farm When Sumit arrived six months after assistant. him, they decided to shift to the dairy The brothers made record production in industry to make their future in a family their first year on the farm. business. By 2013 they were contract milking the “We could never build a farming first farm, and shortly after that each had business like that in India.” a contract milking job, then were contract milking three farms for three seasons RAPIDLY BUILDING A FUTURE before buying cows and rationalising to What followed was a rapid period of sharemilking one farm with 285 cows, learning and growing for the brothers. and added the next sharemilking job with Manoj’s first farm assistant job in the another 465 cows. Wairarapa rapidly turned into a manager’s The farms back onto each other across job when the previous manager quit just the river - although it takes five minutes six months into the season, and the boss to drive between them. The smaller Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | April 2021
