{"id":435382,"date":"2026-05-19T18:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T18:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/435382\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T18:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T18:14:14","slug":"ahuwhenua-trophy-winning-northland-farm-hit-by-storms-after-rapid-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/435382\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahuwhenua Trophy-winning Northland farm hit by storms after rapid rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2020, with the help of a $900,000 Provincial Growth Fund grant, the trust turned a calving operation on a degraded block of land into a beef fattening farm running 950 young bulls on 350ha.<\/p>\n

The 1100ha block also includes native and exotic forest and wetlands.<\/p>\n

The trust was able to bring the land back from the brink, tidy it up by removing 60ha of gorse, setting up a 40km network of pipes to supply troughs and putting in 57km of fencing.<\/p>\n

It was the culmination of decades of alienation from the land for some 1300 Ng\u0101tiwai shareholders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe basically had no fertiliser for many years, there was only one or two troughs, the fencing was in poor state, gorse took up over a third of the farm,\u201d Wetere said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s taken a lot to get the pasture quality up and control our gorse as well, but we\u2019re getting there,\u201d farm manager Matthew Payne said.<\/p>\n

\"KieranKieran Wetere and farm manager Matthew Payne, standing at one of the highest points of the farm. Photo \/ RNZ, Sally Round<\/p>\n

But just as the farm was rehabilitated, it was hit by a devastating deluge in January, a huge setback, but one Payne and his team have taken in their stride.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt ripped out a lot of infrastructure, laneways, fences, water pumps, and we just got a lot of mud pulled out of swamps and blocked access ways to the farm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to do a lot of walking and a little bit of kayaking to shift cattle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shifting cattle was a 40-minute job instead of five minutes, \u201cwhen we kind of didn\u2019t have a lot of time\u201d.<\/p>\n

\" Fence covered in flood debris. Photo \/ RNZ, Sally Round<\/p>\n

The farm was still recovering during Country Life\u2019s visit in the autumn. <\/p>\n

Larger culverts had been installed, and roads were being rebuilt with material from the on-farm quarry.<\/p>\n

\" Young bulls in a paddock, part of the Whangaroa Ngaiotonga Trust’s herd. Photo \/ RNZ, Sally Round<\/p>\n

Payne said the new drains had helped the farm come through more heavy rain events over the past few months.<\/p>\n

The team was aware that climate challenges would not be going away but still saw \u201cheaps of potential\u201d for the whenua, Wetere said.<\/p>\n

\"AA slip scars a hillside on the farm after January’s heavy rainfall.<\/p>\n

Aside from beef, horticulture and agritourism – such as mountain biking on the forest tracks – were some of the ideas being floated.<\/p>\n

Analysis pointed to a more tropical environment, with even crops like mangoes a possibility, he said.<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2020, with the help of a $900,000 Provincial Growth Fund grant, the trust turned a calving operation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,222769,3595,3233,3594,111,43,139,1067,69,1435,1436,18833,8909,6563,222770],"class_list":["post-435382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-ahuwhenua","tag-by","tag-farm","tag-hit","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-nz","tag-rapid","tag-rise","tag-round","tag-sally","tag-storms","tag-trophywinning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435382","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=435382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}