\u201cMy job as president is to make sure their voices are heard loud and clear wherever decisions are being made – and that\u2019s exactly what I intend to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hurst steps into the role after serving as Federated Farmers\u2019 vice-president for the past three years.<\/p>\n
He has also been the organisation\u2019s spokesman for freshwater, biodiversity, and fire and emergency issues.<\/p>\n
Hurst was quick to acknowledge the work of his predecessor, Wayne Langford, paying tribute to his leadership, energy and commitment to farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had six years on the board together, and I love the guy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been a phenomenal leader who has really transformed and modernised the organisation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWayne has been such a strong and passionate advocate. I wish him all the best for whatever comes next. I have no doubt he will have a huge future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hurst said his focus will be on continuing to ensure farmers\u2019 voices were heard clearly in national decision-making.<\/p>\n
He has nearly 40 years of experience as an arable and livestock farmer and extensive experience within Federated Farmers at regional and national levels.<\/p>\n
He was the 2019 Arable Farmer of the Year, a former director for the Foundation for Arable Research, and a volunteer to the South Canterbury Rural Support Trust and United Wheatgrowers.<\/p>\n
Hurst has also been an advocate for farmers at the Seed Quality Management Authority and on the Fertiliser Quality Council.<\/p>\n
Hurst, his wife Janis, and their family, farm 700ha. That includes 450ha in arable crops such as wheat, grass seed, plantain and turnips, with the rest for grazing cattle. Around 250ha is irrigated.<\/p>\n
The family has also just bought a dairy farm nearby.<\/p>\n
Faulkner farms with her husband Rob at Wairakaia, near Gisborne, where they run a diverse operation including sheep, beef, cropping, citrus, farm forestry and contracting.<\/p>\n
She has been on the Federated Farmers national board for four years, with the local government, adverse events, health and rural communities portfolios.<\/p>\n
She also serves on the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, is a Campaign for Wool trustee and holds other charitable directorships.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m honoured and really excited to hold this role,\u201d Faulkner said.<\/p>\n
Faulkner said she was proud of the way Federated Farmers had built relationships with decision-makers around New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Southland\u2019s Chris Dillon joins the board as arable chair, taking over from David Birkett.<\/p>\n
South Canterbury\u2019s Greg Anderson has been voted in as an at-large board member, and Mark Hooper has held his spot as the other at-large member.<\/p>\n
Richard Dawkins (meat and wool chair) and Karl Dean (dairy chair) have retained their positions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMy job as president is to make sure their voices are heard loud and clear wherever decisions are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8126,10043,8486,12026,12967,88769,247783,185,3556,117,111,43,139,69,72024,2572,1240,1865,22052],"class_list":["post-495078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-canterbury","tag-canterburys","tag-colin","tag-farmer","tag-farmers","tag-federated","tag-hurst","tag-is","tag-national","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-organisations","tag-president","tag-south","tag-today","tag-voted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495078","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=495078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}