Youthful enthusiasm helped propel Dhaliwal and his wife, Briar, into the horticulture industry, he told The Country\u2019s Jamie Mackay.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always wanted to go farming, but we found it was hard to go and invest in dairy because it\u2019s a really capital-intensive industry to be a part of… to get scale from the start was a real challenge. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo we looked at a whole lot of other things, and at the time, we didn\u2019t really take into account the risk profile of them because we were young.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe decided to start a horticultural-based business because we saw a lot of opportunity in that market.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dhaliwal said the couple went into cropping and grew watermelons for the local market.<\/p>\n
They then developed a blueberry orchard, which he said exported to Australia, and have just completed a 10ha red kiwifruit orchard.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a real journey, but the opportunities that it has given us have given us what we\u2019ve wanted to achieve, and a great entry point at scale into the sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dhaliwal said Waikato was a great place to grow kiwifruit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Tauranga, as you may know, there is a shortage of land, so Auckland and Waikato are the fastest growing regions for kiwifruit plantings in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t like the frost, so we do frost protect with water, but other than that, it is an ideal climate to grow kiwifruit in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2026 Zanda McDonald Award winners are Bryce Neyland from Australia (left) and Karn Dhaliwal from New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Market gardening can be challenging, something Dhaliwal experienced first-hand during Cyclone Gabrielle.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of our big years in our annual cropping business, we increased our plantings and took on quite a substantial contract,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe invested a lot, and unfortunately Cyclone Gabrielle came in and wiped out the whole lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he learned from the experience and his business came back stronger.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe never asked the question, \u2018what if a once-in-50-year event came through?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we went away from that, rebuilt our business in a different location and split up all our blocks across four lease farms. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd since that day, we\u2019ve mitigated a lot of that risk, and we have a lot more resilient business out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen below:<\/p>\n
Established in 2014 in memory of Australian cattle industry leader Zanda McDonald, the award recognises professionals aged 21-35 who are making a significant contribution to the primary industries across Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n
As part of the Zanda McDonald Award, both winners will receive a tailored professional development package including a mentoring trip across Australia and New Zealand, $10,000 towards further education or training, media coaching and ongoing networking opportunities.<\/p>\n
Dhaliwal said he wanted to spend the next year building up his technical and leadership expertise.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpecifically, around the technical capability of production systems, that\u2019s pastoral and cropping.<\/p>\n
\u201cAround leadership styles; how to lead through difficult situations and bring your team along, because we can\u2019t do this ourselves, and we\u2019ve learned that the hard way in our business. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really keen to draw on expertise and use it to do a better job in the primary sector.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Youthful enthusiasm helped propel Dhaliwal and his wife, Briar, into the horticulture industry, he told The Country\u2019s Jamie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,174614,2346,10779,1559,174576,2082,19392,75115,174575,685,31271,13617,111,43,139,2551,69,12508,312,19554,1524,6202,173868],"class_list":["post-323514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-aback","tag-award","tag-awards","tag-called","tag-dhaliwal","tag-for","tag-grower","tag-hear","tag-karn","tag-last","tag-mcdonald","tag-name","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-night","tag-nz","tag-quite","tag-says","tag-taken","tag-waikato","tag-wins","tag-zanda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}