News & Advice

By Garry Diack, Chief Executive, Ravensdown

Ravensdown’s Garry Diack at the Canterbury A&P Show as a child in 1962, a family tradition that has stayed with him for more than six decades.

The Ravensdown Canterbury A&P Show is special. For generations, it's been a place where farming families come together and town meets country.

It's part of Canterbury's identity, and for South Island families like mine, it’s an annual tradition.

The Canterbury show is more than a simple rural event in an urban setting. It is where world-class farmers and growers meet, exchange and demonstrate innovation.

As the years have progressed this scope has widened from animal and plant breeding to include food processing, technology, capability and productivity. It is a showcase of the next generation of agriculture and the contribution it continues to make to very urban issues, such as funding rural centres, hospitals, roads and infrastructure.

The show is the ‘town square’ of past and future, of rural and urban, of tradition and innovation.

My first visit to the show was in 1962. It was a family affair and we were, of course, dressed in our summer best. What I remember about the show was the smell of animals (backends mostly), white coated officials and judges, how proud the riders sat upon their horses, the dust, the candy floss, the magnificent machinery you could climb all over, and getting lost!

It was the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which illustrated our vulnerability to sudden geopolitical upheavals. The Beatles released Love Me Do, starting a cultural movement that would test the ties of our families. The first Americans went into space, using new technology that changed the way we now farm. The EU was considering Britain's application to join the EEC, which would soon end our reliance on that market.

In that dramatic year, the show served the same purpose it has for 160 years—to help farming communities weather changing times, economic challenges and the evolution of farming itself.

That purpose remains relevant today—giving people confidence by bringing them together to celebrate agriculture, share knowledge and recognise achievement.

The events and trends in the minds of my parents, and other farmers and townies attending the 1962 show, would result 15 years later in the creation of Ravensdown.

In 1977, farmers led by Sir Peter Elworthy recognised that by working together they could get reliable access to quality fertiliser at a fair price. They set up Ravensdown to put their needs first amidst the bevy of challenges stressing farming.

Ravensdown still does that. We source nutrients from around the world, manage international shipping, manufacture products suited to New Zealand conditions and maintain a nationwide network of storage and distribution facilities.

We also work alongside farmers inside the farm gate, combining science, local knowledge, technology and practical advice to help them make better nutrient decisions, improve productivity and use resources responsibly.

This provides famers with confidence they can operate no matter what is happening in the wider world. Confidence that essential nutrients will be available when they're needed. Confidence in the quality of products and advice, and in their ability to plan ahead.

No individual farmer can control international fertiliser markets, shipping costs or geopolitical events. But through collective ownership, farmers have built a business with the scale, infrastructure, expertise and relationships to help navigate those challenges.

Often, the value of cooperation and community institutions is only apparent when they're under threat. The loss of the show left an unbearable gap in the farming and wider community. It threatened our collective ‘town square’.

There was no single local place to exhibit livestock, machinery and rural innovation. No place to connect rural businesses, pass experience and ideas between generations, and show young people the opportunities agriculture offers. No place for our urban neighbours to understand and feel empathy for the people, skills and hard work behind New Zealand’s food and fibre production.

Its return reflects a commitment from the organisers, and Ravensdown as sponsors, to stay true to these core values. That’s why it’s back to a stronger agricultural focus, and that’s why Ravensdown is proud to put its name behind this year's show.

As we approach our 50th anniversary, Ravensdown’s naming sponsorship of the Canterbury A&P Show underscores our legacy—a belief that farmers are stronger when they work together and that investing collectively today can create benefits for generations to come.

When things get tough, eons of populations have gathered at the 'town square' and confronted the future form there. The show is our Canterbury town square and as such it needs to remain a place of strength.

That spirit of co-operation will help New Zealand face new challenges. From volatile global markets and rising costs to changing environmental expectations and the need to attract the next generation into farming. When the gates open at Canterbury Agricultural Park on November 11, Ravensdown will be there again. If there's one thing our history has taught us, it's that New Zealand agriculture is stronger when we work together.