August 10, 2018
Sustainability central for Young Farmers’ head
A young Maori farming high flyer wants to see Maori ideas about sustainability become mainstream for agriculture in Aotearoa.
Former Ahuwhenua young farmer finalist Ash-Leigh Campbell has gone in just over two years from being a sustainability coordinator at Ngai Tahu Farming to being employed as the technical farm manager for its 6500 hectare Te Whenua Hou complex in North Canterbury, giving operational support and oversight to eight dairy farms and five dairy support units.
She has just been elected chair of the New Zealand Young Farmers board.
She says Ngai tahu Farming is making sustainability an important part of its story.
"There’s no waste in nature so we want to move away from take, make, dispose economic model and look at a regenerative one where we can use such things as the natural resources out of the land and in turn, hopefully, the land provides for us and we can look after that land at the same time," she says.
Ash-Leigh Campbell says a lot of the work of New Zealand Young Farmers is to encourage young people to see working on the land as a career.
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