Queen's Birthday: Excelling in the field - another Brownlie triumph

Jim Brownlie ONZM and wife Marilyn. Photo / Supplied

There are some famous names in the family of Northern Hawke's Bay farmer Jim Brownlie – notably father James and famous All Blacks uncles Maurice, Cyril and Laurie.

Jim Brownlie concedes he was never going to reach the same heights on the sports field, but it is the fields where he has excelled, in a farming career which is now recognised in being made a Queen's Birthday Honours Officer of the Order of New Zealand (ONZM) for services to agriculture and education.

Aged 74, and farming hill country cattle finishing and beef unit Nga Tuhoe Station in remote Ruakituri Valley country 65km north of Wairoa and 110km from Gisborne, "parked up" against the Urewera country, his own special achievement was helping set up the Waipaoa Station Farm Cadet Training Trust in 2006.

He says that battling those who questioned the fundraising, they rang every farmer in the Gisborne area, and asking for $500 from each, and had $120,000 within a week.

"I think that is the greatest achievement I have had the privilege of being involved in," he said from his farm, where he lives with wife Marilyn, who as well as farming is a nurse in Wairoa.

He started on Nga Tuhoe in 1974, and when Cyclone Bola struck in 1987 he was working as a commercial pilot based in Taupo where they lived for about five years while their son and daughter were at high school.

The property was unscathed compared with much of the rest of the region.

Prior to the establishment at Waipaoa he was involved with the establishment of the East Coast Farm Cadet Scheme in 1980.

He began his ongoing involvement in mentoring trainees with the formation of the Agriculture Industry Training Organisation (Ag ITO), of which he was Gisborne region committee chairman from 1995 to 2010, becoming a national board member for six years.

He was instrumental in setting up the trust's ability to grant a formal agricultural qualification, and it is now a benchmark for agricultural training in the sheep, beef and supporting agencies sectors.

He has provided guidance and contributed to governance for several Māori incorporated farms and farming clusters, including Whangara Farms, Onenui Station, Tauwharetoi Station, and the Te Taumata Cluster.

Since 2012, he has been at the forefront of a syndicate of 22 farmers across the North Island and in Canterbury developing and breeding a premier lamb export product, which has developed into a joint venture with the Alliance Group.

He says everything he has done has involved other people, and the honour recognises their input as well as his own.