Dickens of a time for rural contractors

You may recall the opening to the Charles Dickens novel on the French Revolution: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”

WORDS BY HELEN SLATTERY, PRESIDENT, RURAL CONTRACTORS NZ, IMAGE SUPPLIED BY RURAL CONTRACTORS NZ AND WILL PROSOR

Rural contractors are now into a Dickens of a season—it really is the best of times and the worst of times all at once. Along with our farmer clients, we are living in an environment with high world demand for NZ food—and record prices to boot. On the flip side, the rural sector as with all others is facing the highest inflationary cost environment in recent memory and labour shortages which continue to bedevil every employer. Like farmers, contractors are half glass full people. We are either born optimists or are best to become one if we don’t want to end up as grumps. We get on with it—whatever is thrown at us by way of weather or Wellington. One of the best things I’ve seen happening in recent times is Rural Contractors NZ’s evolving, closer relationship with Federated Farmers. Accepting our considerable size differential, I think our two organisations can do brilliant things for rural New Zealand when we work together. The prime example of this is the forging of forage contracts. It started as an initiative spearheaded by some Waikato Federated Farmers and rural contractors who saw that the emerging high-cost environment was damaging to everyone. Our CEO Andrew Olsen worked on the issue with Fed Farmers CEO Terry Copeland and his team. We then developed our own set of roadshows in August to promote the forage contract model to our membership with NZX’s Julia Jones as our keynote speaker. The cost indices worked up by NZX to support the forage contract are still unfolding. Fuel and fertiliser may be primary drivers of the increases, but they are just the start. RCNZ has now met the Tractor & Machinery Association TAMA to look at adding new machinery & parts into indices. I have to say that this is all still work in progress as are the gaps for primary producers in the Government’s green list of essential skills for fast-track entry. While it’s great to see regions can import apiarists and farm managers and industries like construction get bring in truck drivers, rural contractors still have to go through the hoops to attract temporary skilled machinery operators. We all do need to understand that labour shortages are a worldwide issue and won’t go away soon even if we open our doors wider. That’s one of the reasons why RCNZ is proud of the success of the HanzonJobs initiative which we championed last year. We expect it to build this season on the 100+ trainees who used it last year. HanzonJobs became the basis of the first-ever trainee awards in rural contracting, and these will now become an annual competition. We also established a National Training Council which has now approved the necessary next steps to build our industry training into an apprenticeship-style scheme. This will bring benefits for both farmers and contractors. RCNZ is also working more closely with Growsafe, promoting the new chemical standards now in place—and it is worth reminding farmers who do their own spraying that they need to be aware of the new spraying requirements. To lift the calibre of spray operators, there are new professional development programs which we are supporting. As part of our own development, the RCNZ Board recently approved a new three-year strategy. Our resolve is to keep working for the benefit of rural and wider New Zealand. As Charles Dickens wrote, we have everything before us.

HELEN SLATTERY PRESIDENT, RURAL CONTRACTORS NZ