Latest / The Muster on Hokonui / The Muster- Doug Avery: The Resilient Farmer

Transcript

The Muster- Doug Avery: The Resilient Farmer · The Muster on Hokonui

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the muster. Doug Avery, the resilient farmer.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: He wrote a book with that exact title. Just looking
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: at the season, it's about perspective. It's something that needs
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: to happen at the moment where you've just got to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: look at what's ahead of you, I suppose. And Doug
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: knows this as well as anybody, given what he's been
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: through in the past.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: G'day, Doug.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Always good to catch up.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how are you going? How are you going down there?
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Not so good, apparently.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: This week's been better, and the forecast is looking, well,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: what is it, next four or five days at least,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: you know, early 20s.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's awesome.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It had to happen.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All these things end. The tough
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: part is when, and, you know, when you think, well,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: we've had enough, usually if these extreme events are occurring,
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: they've usually got one or two nasty punches just to
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: make sure you know they came.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing with our Nino being told that
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: it could be wet again towards the end of the month,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: but just having respite at the moment and looking back
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: at what the last six to eight weeks have presented
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: and just trying to look forward.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. So it's all, as farmers, we run a marathon,
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: not a sprint. And when you're in the middle of
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: a crisis, one of the most important mental strategies to
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: have is to... to calm yourself down, to learn the skills,
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: which resilience is what I spent the time trying to
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: help pass on. Because when I went into those big
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: dry years, I had virtually none. I'd actually been pretty spoon-fed.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: And when we went into there, five years of hell.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: And in the end, I really broke. I still kept
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: looking after my animals, but I was just a shell
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: of a human being. But the other night I was
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: involved in a webinar down for that area and Cain
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Briscoe was on there and his experience through his hard
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: times and mine were virtually identical. And we both agreed
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: that those tough years were, while not very pleasant, formed
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: the basis for what we both have gone on to
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: have great lives. Everybody in farming will have different environmental
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: processes going on, but virtually no one, no matter where
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: they farm, will ever be exempt from the sword of
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: the environment. And there's two ways I look at that.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: One is, at least it's the environment, and you can
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: get as angry as you like about what's happened, but
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: you can't hit anything or square it up. It's going
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: to deal to you anyway. But as human beings, we
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: have the capacity, and it's what I've spent the last
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: part of my life trying to do, is help people
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: grow the capacity from these events to make it so
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: that the next time they come, they are more able
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: to cope. You'll never stop the rain. You'll never stop
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: the lack of rain, is what we always say. But
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: you can improve your travel habits. and as I said
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: before farming's a marathon not a sprint and if you
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: take that approach when these times happen there's sort of
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: really destructive thinking like when you start thinking about what
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: you're missing out on and how much money you're losing
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: or whatever but the far more productive thinking is when
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: you start thinking how can I minimise the damage and
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: that's always damn hard but Even better still, how can
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I look after myself so that I'm ready to go
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: the best I possibly can when this bloody crap, for
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: want of a better word, is finished? And that's your
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: best shot. And minimizing damage and harm, firstly to yourself
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: and then to your bank balance and to your natural capital,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the better you are at that, the sooner you spring back.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: And that's real hard to dish out when you're getting
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: day after day after day torrential ice-cold rain during lambing
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: or whatever.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Just how important is it to give yourself some time
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: to go and do something that you want to do
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: that's off-farm, Doug, because it's too easy at this time
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: of year to get the one-track mind regarding work and workload?
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's huge. That's huge. And the other night on
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: that seminar, I talked about something that we developed at
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Bonneveree I went into that time as a little robot worker.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: I just used to be up earliest, work hardest, work longest.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: I prided myself on how much work I could do.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: When I'd been completely mauled by the environmental drought that
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: was thrown on us, I changed my whole entry point
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: into agriculture. And over that time, we developed a thing which,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: I didn't use these words quite so much, but I was...
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: at the Crusaders headquarters with the Xander McDonald Awards recently.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: And Colin Mansbridge, the CEO of the Crusaders, used the
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: word servant leadership. And I thought to myself, well, that's
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: exactly what we've been applying at Bonneveree. So, you know,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: some people haven't got employees, but a lot of farms have.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And one of the magic things about having a team
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: approach to your farming is that when you go into
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: hard times like you're going through down there at the moment,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: there's more heads to share the load. And so a
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: servant mentality means employing the very, very best people you
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: can when things are trucking along really well and then
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: working with them to help grow the absolute potential of them.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden you'll find, oh my gosh,
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I'm loving this. I'm loving growing people as became for
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: us actually more important than growing lucerne or crops or whatever.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: We found when we grew people, the whole joy of
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: farming changed. And the great thing about that is you
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: get buy-in from those people, and at tough times, they
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: help soldier it as well. You can create fun within
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: the team. You can just take turns at actually relieving
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: each other of the absolute joy bottom gear grind. And
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I think there's a lot in that to think about.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: You know, a lot of people have sort of leadership
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: from the top and they're sort of looking down on
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: everyone else in their team. And then when they get
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: tough times, they feel that they have to even lead harder.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: And often human beings are already near the end of
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: their tether. And, you know, the difference between one person
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: and the next is in terms of mental capacity, is
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: not that great. And if you actively use your down
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: times or your bad times to start building a more
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: resilient mindset and capability, the end result's quite amazing. And
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: I feel that I've lived that. I'm sort of off
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: the farm now and living the dream.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: That's the way we want to see it in life,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Doug Avery. Always appreciate your time on The Muster. Enjoy
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: your weekend, mate.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks very much. You take care.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Doug Avery, the resilient farmer. Words of wisdom ahead of
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: the weekend. This is The Muster. Up next, Michelle Watt
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: in the Country Crossover.