Jamie Mackay: How the Rural Landscape Has Changed Since Fieldays 2025

Wow! I can hardly believe it’s been a year since we attended Fieldays 2025.

I looked back on something I’d written, 12 months ago, as I celebrated three decades of fronting up at Mystery Creek:

So, 30 years on, what can we expect at Fieldays 2025?

Personally, I’m very optimistic. With the notable exception of strong wool and some horticultural/arable crops, returns for farmers and growers are good, with the likes of dairy and beef at record prices. Admittedly this comes with the caveat of record post-covid, on-farm cost inflation but times are getting better, despite the best efforts from the Orange Man in the White House.

Farm income going up. Interest rates going down. And hopefully Mother Nature playing ball? Now there’s a good recipe for some strong tractor sales at Mystery Creek!

So, the more things change, the more they stay the same! A lot of water has passed under the many bridges spanning the mighty Waikato River since this time a year ago.

For starters, strong wool has had a remarkable renaissance, albeit from a very low and unsustainable base. One year ago, the Strong Wool Indicator (SWI) was sitting at 347 cents per kg. At the time of writing, it’s leapt to 632 cents. A far cry from the Covid lows of 2021 when it crashed to 162 cents! Mind you, if you look back a decade to 2016 it was at 552 cents. So we still have some way to go.

Arable and viticulture are still really struggling. Kiwifruit and red meat are going gangbusters, and dairy is doing very nicely, thanks.

Twelve months ago, we thought Trump had done his worst with his tariffs. In hindsight we have fared remarkably well in the face of such an imposition on free trade. However, we haven’t fared quite so well with the 2026 fuel and fertiliser crisis he’s created for us in the Middle East. Once again on-farm cost inflation is a real issue for the primary sector.

Unlike a year ago, interest rates are now going up but so, thankfully, are farm incomes for many. Mother Nature has generally played ball and many Fonterra farmers have had a sizable capital repayment from the sale of the consumer brands.

At the risk of repeating my utterance from 2025; Now there’s a good recipe for some strong tractor sales at Mystery Creek!

So now with more than 30 years in rural radio, and almost as many appearances at Fieldays under my belt, I guess I could describe myself as somewhat of a Mystery Creek veteran. And I’ve certainly seen some changes since I made my debut appearance back in the 1990s.

Back then, I was running a small provincial private radio station, Hokonui Gold, specialising in rural broadcasting. We were only answerable to ourselves and to be honest, we were cowboys. But we were cowboys who had a lot of fun!

I (sort of) fondly remember a raucous one-day return charter flight we ran from Invercargill to Hamilton with a plane load of Southland farmers.

Then there was the Southland Farming Tent – populated by bankers, accountants, lawyers and farm advisers – set up to encourage North Island cow cockies to make the holy pilgrimage south to a much cheaper farming El Dorado. Those who did made a fortune.

It was fronted by the then Invercargill mayor, Tim Shadbolt, in all his eloquent glory, who would get on his soapbox hourly and haul the punters in. And boy did some of those so-called Southland professionals add to the nocturnal Hamilton economy!

The advent of the huge new Mystery Creek Pavilion in 2003, and the ongoing permanent paving of the lanes, almost made gumboots redundant. Almost, but not quite, as the carparks after a wet Waikato week can still be a trap for young players!

Fog can also catch out the uninitiated. Hamilton airport, mid-June and fog aren’t always ideal bed mates. More than once, we’ve circled the Tron only to be diverted to Auckland.

On one such occasion, when we were being diverted to Auckland, I thought I recognised the slightly balding pate of the man sitting in front of me. I shoulder-tapped him and introduced myself to David Shearer – the Labour leader – a man I had interviewed often but never met in person.

And what a nice bloke he was. So, we shared a car to Fieldays, stopping just outside of Huntly to do my radio show live via mobile phone.

Unfortunately, when we got to Fieldays poor old David was totally anonymous. It was back in about 2012 or 2013 and John Key, at the height of his rock star economy popularity, was the Pied Piper of Mystery Creek. Hordes followed him everywhere. No politician, before or since, has enjoyed such fandom!

I wonder who will receive the fandom in 2026? Luxon or Winston?

On a more personal business note, after 15 years, I’m looking to exit or, at the very least, downsize my investment in a Southland dairy farm equity partnership.

Blair Evans from Malloch McClean +MORE in Invercargill asked me to make some financial and business observations from my life and times in an equity partnership. With an aging farmer population, I can see EPs and syndicates becoming more prevalent, especially in the sheep and beef sector. Ditto for the likes of Kiwifruit, where the cost of sole ownership can be prohibitive.

So here goes:

1. Don’t be like me and go into an equity partnership with a view to doubling your money over 15 years through capital gains from land value. Capital gains, over and above the rate of inflation, are a bonus. Your real gains are to be made through increasing performance, production and profits and the associated dividend yields that flow from that.
2. Choose your business partners wisely. You don’t need to be best mates, in fact, going into business with best mates is sometimes an easy way to become ex-mates. In the case of our equity partnership, I only knew two of the original nine other shareholders well. Over time though, we became friends and acquaintances and have remained on good terms with departed shareholders. Choose shareholders with a proven, reputable business track record and with expertise in different business skill sets.
3. Make sure you and your business partners are aligned philosophically when it comes to your business values and risk appetite. Being a conservative accountant type by nature, I’ve always been a big fan of controlling the controllables. In the case of a dairy farm, that’s fixing a portion of milk price and fixing a good portion of mortgage interest rates. Some of my equity partners were, or are, more entrepreneurial in spirit than me! And remember, you are but one partner. You can’t always get your own way. That is the strength and weakness of an equity partnership.
4. Choose your sharemilker or contract milker wisely. This will make or break your business. Ideally have someone with “skin in the game” but this can be tricky if the sharemilker is a business partner and the business decides to go in another direction.
5. Have a well-planned and honest exit strategy for all shareholders. Exiting shareholders need to give existing shareholders as much notice as possible of their intention to depart the partnership. Valuations need to be entirely independent, transparent and objective. Not subjective.
6. Have some fun along the way. Everyone leads busy lives. But take time at least once a year, it could be at the AGM, to break bread and share a beer with your fellow shareholders and, most importantly, all farm staff.
7. But most of all, seek professional advice before you contemplate entering or exiting an equity partnership. Our accountant at Malloch McClean +MORE, Kyle Fisken, has been invaluable.

Enjoy Fieldays. Catch you next month!