Prime Movers sector report: Maori Agriculture

By KEVIN TAYLOR

Ahuwhenua means son of the soil. If anyone can claim such a title it is the Paewai brothers of Dannevirke.

Ringa Paewai stares out the window of his farmhouse and nods in the direction of a nearby hill which marks the centre of Tiratu Station, a 364ha property running more than 2600 sheep and grazing dairy cows.

His immaculate farm is his home, and always will be. He loves the land and will have to be dragged off it.

He hardly ever goes elsewhere, admitting to having never been in a supermarket in his entire 65 years.

But there is no faulting the father of seven's farming skills. He and older brother Punga have won the Ahuwhenua Trophy - the Maori Farmer of the Year Award - twice.

The first time was in 1978, when they won along with younger brother Hepa, and the second time was 1990. It was only recently that Paewai learned he and Punga were indeed winners in 1990, the last year the award was bestowed.

However, the award - established in 1932 by outstanding Maori leader, scholar and Cabinet minister Sir Apirana Ngata - is coming back this year thanks to Meat New Zealand and a number of other bodies including Te Puni Kokiri and Bank of New Zealand.

The awards will be presented at Wairakei Resort near Taupo on June 7. Open to sheep, beef and goat farmers, judging of the 29 entries has already started.

The competition aims to recognise excellence in Maori farming, and highlight to the Maori farming community successful farm management approaches and recognition of tikanga Maori.

But Paewai says it was Punga who entered the awards, not him.

When the 1978 award was presented to the three brothers, the then Governor-General, Sir Keith Holyoake, described the Paewai family as "good farmers, good shearers, good rugby players, in fact damn good Kiwis".

While Paewai smiled for the cameras and shook hands after the win, he didn't really believe in it and admits it did not mean much to him. The same applied to the 1990 award, which he did not even go to the Agricultural Fieldays near Hamilton to collect.

A farmer for 28 years after acquiring the family farm in partnership with Punga and Hepa, he says he never wanted to do anything else.

"We had to shear for 20-odd years to get anything together to be able to do it. "I never really wanted to do anything else - so just to get here and be able to do what I wanted to do was more or less it as far as I was concerned."

However, he concedes the awards show the farm operation he runs is economic and efficient.

"I think once you are involved in the competition it keeps you on your toes, that's for sure," Paewai says.

The competition included visits by consultants, who looked over the whole operation including the books.

Earlier this year the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research released a report, commissioned by Te Puni Kokiri, studying the Maori economy.

Maori agricultural output was estimated at about $700 million, about 7.4 per cent of New Zealand's total agricultural output. In fishing, Maori control an estimated 39 per cent of the domestic fishing quota, but in forestry Maori interests are not yet significant despite the fact that Maori are thought to control about 10 per cent of forestry land.

The institute's report says much of Maori agriculture is managed by self-employed farmers.

But Federation of Maori Authorities executive deputy chairman Paul Morgan says most Maori agriculture, at least 80 per cent, is firmly controlled by trusts and incorporations. That would make Maori farming families like the Paewais unusual.

Morgan, who has pushed for the Ahuwhenua Trophy to be brought back, thinks the institute's estimate of Maori agricultural output is also conservative. He says Maori agriculture has gone ahead in leaps and bounds in the past few years.

While a report in 1999 said a substantial chunk of the Maori land base - the great bulk of it on the North Island - was underdeveloped, Morgan says output has improved dramatically through better productivity and land acquisition.

The federation represents Maori trusts, incorporations, trust boards and Treaty settlement entities, many of which are heavily involved in agriculture.

Maori are represented in every sector except pig farming and Morgan says while they are now a force in New Zealand agriculture, this has been little-recognised by the mainstream media.

He says while all farmers face the same generic issues, specific Maori issues include improving the corporate governance of entities - including the separation of governance from management - and developing industry knowledge.

Separation of governance and management has been an issue in the past, but he says it has improved dramatically as older kaumatua are replaced by younger people with better commercial skills and education.

Morgan chairs one of the larger Maori entities. The Nelson-based Wakatu Incorporation is now involved in three major sectors - property, primary industries and seafood. In the year to last July 31 it made an after-tax operating profit of $4.46 million from total assets of $122 million. It is involved in horticulture, forestry, vineyards and dairy farming, as well as the seafood industry. He says the incorporation's expertise is in land use.

Many of the large Maori farm holdings held by major Maori entities in the North Island are situated in a huge swathe from Wanganui across to the Bay of Plenty and on to the East Coast.

Morgan says farms held under Maori control in that area are significant sheep, beef and dairy operations. There is also significant participation in Northland.

He says Maori, with their particular worldview, have for years been operating their organisations on a triple bottom-line basis.

"These entities and the owners of them are prepared to look long-term and the entities are perpetual. In other words we have got commercial, social and cultural issues.

"That's not unique to business, because in the Pakeha business world you are talking about triple bottom-line.

"But we have been doing it for years. In a business like Wakatu you have to balance the issues of commercial strategy with the cultural and social development of your people - and it can be done successfully."

Morgan is pleased such concepts are now being adopted in the wider business world, because they are more attuned to what Maori believe.

"We can't just have pure commerce and have businesses destroy the environment and destroy communities."

To Paewai, race is irrelevant to farming, but he has nothing against the Ahuwhenua Trophy being re-instituted. "There's probably heaps of guys out there - like my older brother - that would see this and really love to be involved."

But he says people must compete on the same basis, not on the colour of their skin. "If we can't compete on the one thing, then I don't see why there should be a separate award."

However, Paewai says his brother Punga is the one who saw the awards as useful at a time when their shearing family were trying to become established as credible farmers. They have been spectacularly successful in achieving that aim.

So it is appropriate that Punga, now 68, is nearly finished a two-year term as a Mormon missionary in Papua New Guinea - helping locals develop their agricultural potential.