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National

Farmer/online star wins Māori business award

Māori farmer, author and online star Tangaroa Walker has just won the Premier Award at this year's Te Kupeka Umaka Māori Ki Ārai-Te-Uru Māori business awards, which celebrate Māori business success in Otago and Southland.

“It was awesome to be recognised and straight after we got the word I rang my team and told everybody at about 1 o'clock in the morning that we’d won the Susan Spence award and everyone was over the moon," he says.

Tangaroa runs a 500-cow dairy farm in Southland and is the face of Farm4life, an online platform that delivers rural education. With the help of two staff members he finishes most of his farm work by lunch time so he can run the platform and take part  in a diving venture.

He says he has been putting in some pretty hefty hours to build this up. It's probably about eight, nine years in the making. So I'm really chuffed to be recognised for this award.”

Walker believes what captured the judges was “probably a little bit of innovation merging technology with what's happening out on the farm.

Capturing the 'cool stuff'

"Often we've been left behind out on the farm but we're pretty old school, we farmers. To sell a product to a farmer, you either have to get them down at the Fieldays or drive up their driveways.”

He set up the online platform, trying to encapsulate "a 360 degree view of what we do on the farm.

"There is some awesome mahi being done in these areas, so much to talk about yet when you look at the media ... we get highlighted around the globe for  bad management practices on farm, underpaying staff but there's not really anybody telling all the cool stuff that's going on and how awesome it is to be a farmer and also how I can delegate my day and go out and get a few kinas to drop off to the whānau.”

Walker says one of the big challenges with farming is being isolated away from whānau, friends, and the community.

“Isolation is a thing, and it does change your outlook on life."

He says it's important  to give people that ability to zone out and realize what's important in life. "You know your whānau, your friends, your sports teams, your community, going out diving, giving you the ability to give back to your community. That gives, you know, a really good sense of well-being and giving is probably the easiest way to feel good about yourself.”

Walker says he plans to buy more ‘farm4life’ farms and promote New Zealand.

“I really want to have by 2030 the first carbon-positive farm and methane-free farm, in New Zealand, and hopefully here in Southland."