East Coast Young Farmers to battle it out this weekend

East Coast Young Farmers to battle it out this weekend

Shane Munford and Tim van de Molen will be representing Northern and Waikato/Bay of Plenty respectively at The National Bank Young Farmer Contest Grand Final in Masterton from June 29th to July 2nd. Now it's time for the East Coast to find their Grand Finalist.

The East Coast Regional Final for The National Bank Young Farmer Contest takes place March 12th with the Practical Day at the Waipukurau A&P Showgrounds followed up later on by the Evening Show at the Civic Theatre, Waipukurau from 7pm.

Also showing off their farming skills at the Showgrounds are the AgriKidsNZ and TeenAg Competitors. Preliminaries will start from 8am with the top seven teams from each Competition progressing on to their respective Race-Offs where teams will race against each other to complete a series of agriculturally based tasks. The top three teams from each Race-Off will also get the chance to head to Grand Final.

The Practical Day starts early at the Waipukurau A&P Showgrounds; Contestants can expect to be pushed physically and mentally in a variety of Challenges designed to test their farming skills both on-farm and off. The Challenges are: AGMARDT Agri-business, Lincoln University Agri-growth, Ravensdown Agri-skills and the big crowd pleaser; the Isuzu Agri-Sports Challenge.

Once the hard work is completed outside, the Contestants will move inside to the Evening Show at the Civic Theatre. Here the winners of the various Challenges will be announced and Contestants will be given one last chance to gain points in question buzzer rounds before the top four are announced. The audience will then hear speeches from the top four and the winner of the East Coast Regional Final will be announced.

To help raise funds for the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Fund, an auction has been introduced to the Evening Show thanks to the generosity of Contest Sponsors. Honda has donated a XR125 Duster: the ultimate 2-wheel farm bike. Echo has given a line trimmer and there's 20L of Glyphosate from Ravensdown to auction off too. The National Bank is pitching in by donating an iPod that will also go to the highest bidder.

The Contestants are a mixture of new and old faces this year and there's even a bit of family rivalry thrown in to make things even more interesting.

Twenty nine year old Angus Brown is no stranger to the Contest; he was a Grand Finalist last year. His twin brother Duncan is also competing and was the Regional Final Convenor for East Coast in 2010. The brothers, from the Ballance Club, are mixed stock farmers and the last time they met at Regional Final was in 2009.

26 year old Edward Bell from Eskview Club manages a sheep and beef lease block and is competing in his second Regional Final. Mike Croad, also from the Eskview Club, is a 29 year old farm manager, and this will be his third time at Regional Final. Twenty five year old Tony Dowman is a farm business manager from the South Wairarapa Club and has also competed in several Regional Finals.

The rest of the field is made up of first time Contestants: Sean Stafford (29) is a Regional Manager with the National Bank and a Member of the Wairarapa Club; also from Wairarapa Club and another first time Contestant is 29 year old farm owner Tom Brown. Eskview Club Member, 28 year old 2IC dairy farmer, Erin Reed is also a first time Contestant.

Not only will one of these eight be announced as Northern's Grand Finalist they'll also take home a generous prize pack worth $10,250 including a Honda XR125 two-wheeled farm bike valued at $4000, a $1500 Lincoln University Scholarship, $1000 cash and $500 towards a capability development programme from AGMARDT, a weekend hunting trip courtesy of Isuzu valued at $1000, Ravensdown quality fertiliser products worth $1000, a range of Swanndri clothing valued at $750 and The National Bank will provide $500 cash.

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