THE AHUWHENUA Trophy was recently presented to Tarawera Station – a large Maori sheep and beef farm (about 30,000 stock) on the Napier Taupo highway.
The station was one of three finalists for this prestigious award. All three were sizable high-performing Maori enterprises, sustainable and with first-class governance structures and long-term plans that would be the envy of any mainstream farm.
About 850 people packed into the Napier Events Centre to see the trophy presented by Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and Maori Affairs minister Dr Pita Sharples. It was a brilliantly run event and competition – slick, entertaining and a great celebration of success. However, by and large, the success celebrated in Napier has gone unnoticed by the great unwashed. Mainstream news media ignored the field days run by the three finalists. Rural News was the only newspaper reporting on all three.
In some ways you can excuse New Zealanders for having a negative view of Maori, especially given that most news media are either too lazy or so obsessed with crime and politics that they can’t get their heads around Maori being successful. As Pita Sharples rightly points out, news media are obsessed with telling negative stories about Maori, but never cover the positives.
The Ahuwhenua Trophy has been contested for 80 years and has been won by small family enterprises, and large trusts and incorporations. The winners of this trophy are not just the best Maori farmers, they are up with and surpassing many pakeha farmers and corporate farms.
Maori are a powerhouse of the agribusiness economy. Without them our export returns would not look so flash. It’s said that about 10% of the milk and 15% of sheep and beef exports are produced on Maori farms. Through the Maori dairy company Miraka, in the central North Island, they are into further processing of dairy products.
But this in some ways is just the beginning. There are thousands of hectares of Maori land either undeveloped or underperforming and when that comes on-stream the numbers will change dramatically.
Noticing, rather than ignoring, Maori agriculture is a no-brainer.