Pipfruit NZ's technical manager Mike Butcher will be bowing out triumphantly at the end of this year.
Dr Butcher was presented with the industry's outstanding achievement award at the Pipfruit NZ annual conference in Queenstown last month.
He told the conference retirement was a tough decision to make after 15 years steering the industry through its research and photo-sanitary issues, in what everyone accepted have been some of its toughest years.
A NEW VOICE
New Beef+Lamb eastern director George Tatham delivered his first annual update for Hawke's Bay farmers in Havelock North last week.
This year the Wairarapa farmer took the place of the departing director, Beef+Lamb chairman and Central Hawke's Bay farmer Mike Petersen.
Tatham reviewed the organisation's performance over the past year and discussed a range of subjects, including measuring farm business performance, the environmental agenda, the Red Meat Profit Partnership, budget allocations and Meat Board project investments.
A South Wairarapa farmer hopes CCTV recordings will help identify the thieves who have been stealing his petrol.
The third such theft in the past four months occurred last weekend and specially placed cameras recorded a ute with three large drums on the back, and a man walking to the vehicle.
Charlie Matthews' tank had been drained of 500 litres in June, another 500 litres in August, and more on Saturday night.
That would have been "a hell of a weight" for the thieves' ute, he reckoned.
"I'm just trying to make other rural people out there aware that there are people out there doing this," he said.
DAIRY WOMEN
The Dairy Women's Network has appointed an events manager and a third regional co-ordinator.
It is part of the next stage of growth, which dates back to its formation in 1998 following an international Conference for Women in Agriculture held in the United States that year.
Appointed events manager, with 30 events to oversee each year including seminars and other projects to assist the status of women in the industry is Kym Gibson, of Hamilton. She has spent eight years working for the nonprofit Life Trust.
