After 10 years working on farms across New Zealand’s Wairarapa region, Sam Vivian-Greer began to harness his experience and love for farming in new ways, leading him to head up a team with a broad remit to protect and enrich huge swathes of Māori land. He says the Zanda McDonald Award has “absolutely broadened my horizons”.
Sam Vivian-Greer still pinches himself when he thinks about the influential conversations in which he often finds himself these days as part of his job.
“I’m sometimes sitting around the table with ministers or other influential decision-makers, giving direct feedback, whether it’s on environmental legislation or some other policy relating to agriculture,” says Sam, who joined the Māori Trustee’s office, Te Tumu Paeroa in 2021 and now leads its Whenua (Māori land) Services Team.
“I never would have seen myself in that position, at any time.”
But not only does the 2021 Zanda McDonald Award winner have the credentials for the role – bringing 10 years of farming experience, an agribusiness degree and a consultant’s ability to lead change – he also has an abundance of passion.
“My team and I are able to deliver on a really clear purpose – to ensure the land is being used in the right way, with the right people, for the right thing. That, for me, is a real driver.”
Sam’s team at Te Tumu Paeroa has a remit essentially to help the Māori Trustee – Dr Charlotte Severne, appointed to the role by the Māori Land Court in 2018 – to carry out her duties to protect and grow Māori land on behalf of its owners. Currently, that includes around 88,000 hectares of land, on behalf of 100,000 owners.
“We do everything from running full scale commercial farms, including managing the financial accounts, compliance, strategy or fixing fences, through to packaging up and leasing out small parcels of land,” says Sam, a father of two who lives in Masterton, about 100 km north of Wellington.
“It’s all about developing and enriching the land we look after and making sure we're doing the best thing possible.”
Sam’s path into agriculture was not a predictable one, given he was born and raised in the suburbs of Auckland.
But in his junior schooling years, he remembers being captivated by the “eight sheep, two cows and an emu” that were kept on two acres of land owned by his urban school and, so when it came time for him to choose his senior subjects, he picked agriculture.
“I was just like a duck to water,” he recalls. “I loved it and at the end of high school I packed up my first little car and drove down to the bottom of the North Island to go to farming school.”
Sam’s learning curve was steeper than most other students who’d grown up on rural farms, but he excelled. In his second year, he won a scholarship, which kicked off his farming career, landing him a job as a shepherd with award-winning ram breeders, Wairere Rams.
“As the ‘kid from Auckland’, I wasn't allowed to use the chainsaw, so I spent the first three weeks using a handsaw to cut the trees out of the manager's garden!” he recalls with a grin. “But two and a half years later, I was overseeing one of the breeding programs.”
Over the next 10 years, Sam broadened his experiences with a few different farming operations and completed an agribusiness degree, majoring in Farm Management, at Massey University. He also did his part for his industry, including running a local action network group as part of the Red Meat Profit Partnership – a collaboration to drive sustainable profits for the sector. He was also involved in committees such as the Wairarapa Emerging Red Meat Leader competition and Tararua Farmer of the Year.
Then the direction of his career changed. “As much as I love being on-farm, I’d realised what I really enjoyed was working alongside farmers and growers, helping them to find a pathway into the industry or to build their businesses, so I made the decision to step off-farm and into agricultural consultancy.”
It was at this time he applied for the Zanda McDonald Award, with the idea that if he was going to put himself in the “privileged position” of advising others on their farming pursuits, he had a responsibility to have as broad a view and network across the industry as possible.
“It’s definitely given me that, and much, much more,” he says.
“Being part of the award community has absolutely broadened my horizons. I've been fortunate enough to have met some of the people who I've always looked up to as absolute leaders in farming and primary sector enterprises in New Zealand and Australia, and to have the opportunity to hear not only their perspectives on the industry, but their own personal journeys.
“You get an incredibly clear view of the pathway they’ve taken to get to where they are. There's no other way you could have that experience.”
Sam also credits the award with a newfound self-confidence, helping him chip away at the ‘imposter syndrome’ he’s often felt throughout his career.
“It wasn't necessarily winning that gave me the confidence,” he explains. “It was the experience and the interactions with people involved with the award – the other finalists, winners and the mentors. I can reach out to any of them, and they are just there, they've got the time for me, and that’s given me another layer of self-assuredness.”
He continues to be “uplifted” by his ongoing Zanda community connections, including as a judge to select the following year’s winners, and as a regular participant in catch ups with a group of alumni finalists to check in on each other and share views on industry issues.
The experience has reinforced his ambition to ultimately step up the impact he can have by supporting people where he sees a big gap in the agricultural industry, which he calls the “missing middle”.
“In New Zealand, there's reasonably good support for people trying to get into the farming industry – to get that first shepherding job or the first dairy farm job. There’s also reasonable support at the other end, for established farm owners,” he explains.
“But in between there's a massive middle ground – once you’re in the industry, you have to find your own way to the other end of it. And that’s where I would like to focus – helping people in the middle, working alongside them to find their optimal pathway through.”
