Stepping up to the challenge

The Press

Had Don Nicolson not become a farmer, he might have remained a successful sawmiller.

But the young Nicolson, who set up a mill in Southland in the early 1980s after a zig-zag career path, got the call-up from his father to take over the family farm. And so a farmer was born.

As of yesterday, the smooth-faced Waimatua farmer, who lightly rolls his Rs in that familiar Southland burr, took on one of farming's most difficult jobs as president of Federated Farmers.

Keeping the farmers of the nation united and striving in the same direction is at times like herding cats, because of their diverse makeup and often disparate beliefs.

Nicolson, though, cheerfully accepts these challenges.

Previously Federated Farmers' vice-president, he has for the first time come out from under the shadow of his predecessor, Charlie Pedersen, a shoot-from-the-hip leader.

As president, Pedersen, who is not backward about coming forward, took on most of the media duties, while Nicolson eschewed the traditional vice-president's rebel-rouser role in favour of a backstage performance.

With Pedersen gone, the bright lights are now on the new leader of a lobby group of 15,000 members.

Nicholson says Pedersen was the boss during his three-year term and, as vice-president, he was prepared to take on the less sexy roles of commenting on local government issues and the economy.

"I have to front up now. People have said I have served my apprenticeship, and I am honoured that my peers have given me this opportunity and I hope I won't let them down."

All the signs are that Nicolson, 51, has the same fire in the belly for pushing farmer causes as the departing chief.

Like Petersen, ironically also once a sawmiller, he went through the stressful 1980s and showed an interest in farm advocacy at a young age.

"I saw the reforms (subsidy removals) that hurt farmers, and then a transformation in the economy where we stopped seeing people leaning on shovels and growing a career through legislation, like planners and consultants. I call them the reef fish. If you analyse it, the reef fish diminished in the 1980s. We are in a revival of them again from the mid-1990s when the RMA (Resource Management Act) gave them a whole lot of ideas.

"I saw these reef fish nibbling at my production and I didn't like it. Why should we produce more and more and more to keep these reef fish in a job?"

Carrying the analogy further, Nicolson believes the reef fish have grown to become "piranhas and sharks" - contentious perhaps, but that is how he feels.

And so a farmer lobbyist was born.

Despite being accused of being Right-leaning, Nicolson says the federation will continue to take an apolitical stance under his tenure. The federation has been under the MMP political system for 12 years and it has learnt to work with multiple parties, he says.

Nicolson is married to Gail and has two daughters, Sarah and Jane.

He was educated at Southland Technical College and, with a bent towards science, left school to work as a laboratory technician in the freezing-works industry at Ocean Beach in the early 1970s. Testing the same product day in and day out didn't capture his imagination and, during a brief foray into the public service, he became a livestock testing officer trainee for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

In a career turnaround, he established the timber milling business in 1979 before returning to the 212ha family farm about 10km east of Invercargill. "That was a 50:50 call because my sawmill business was going well. I didn't see me doing that for ever and my father made the decision that I should take over the farm. I didn't know if that was the right decision, either."

With the benefit of hindsight, he might have taken a different route had he known what was ahead of him. The economic downturn of the mid-1980s almost forced him out.

"When I started I had no idea that farming was operating with privilege and that production returns were not based on real prices.

"I got into farming with not a lot of capital and by 1986 I was technically insolvent. There was a lot of loss of pride, but I got through that."

Nicolson began by buying 40 hectares of swampland from his father and planting trees on it in 1981. As he slowly bought the rest of the farm, he started mixing with "go-ahead farmers" and improved the genetic potential of his coopworth sheep to become a top-5 per cent sheep farmer.

At one stage he ran a stud, and coopworths with some texel influence are still on the property.

To get ahead, he began leasing land around the district and increased his production five-fold, going from 1500 stock units to 3700 ewes, 700 hoggets and, at the peak, 400 red-deer hinds and progeny between the early 1980s and mid-1990s.

He insisted on doing all the work himself, a trait he traces to his Scottish bloodlines.

"I have even been stupid enough to shear my own sheep, and am proud that no-one else has ever crutched my work lambs I am pretty bloody-minded about that."

With some regret, now that the area has become a rich conversion ground for dairying, he only bought one lease block, although they were all offered to him. Such is hindsight.

Unlike others who bemoan the growth of dairying, Nicolson believes it has rejuvenated farming.

"I have dairy farms all around me, and thank God for the dairy industry. It has put competitive tension around my area, which gives me some security of an increased value in the farm. The meat industry wasn't going to do it.

"Having given 26 years, I am pretty disappointed with the meat industry and wool. I have had what I consider one good year of farming, where I made a lot more than the average wage, and that was in 2001."

That year he received $50 before tax for each lamb, after $28 costs were removed from an average $78 return. Last year he was left with $1 from an average $55 for a 17kg lamb.

This meagre return is untenable, with many other sheep farmers in the same position, he says. "The cost of production has almost doubled, so how can I stay in the meat industry? Tomorrow I could lease my farm (to dairy farmers) for $220,000 (a year) and not get out of bed.

"I trusted the meat industry to come right and I trusted the meat leaders - they will hate me for this, but I trusted everybody."

Nicolson says he is lucky to be in a lowland fertile farming area the outlook for midland and highland sheep farmers with no dairy or dairy grazing options is worse. The only hope is that sheep returns might come right next season, he says.

Committed to farming despite the financial pain, last year he bought a 40ha Eyrewell block of cropping land in Canterbury and plans to put this in feed wheat.

Nicolson rose up through the ranks in the Federated Farmers from a start as chairman of its Southland transport and fertiliser committee in 1996. He became president of the Southland branch in 2002 and national vice-president in 2005.

During this period he metaphorically locked his gate to outsiders in the public-access debate of 2005.

Two years earlier, he had led Southland farmers through the streets of Invercargill in a 1500-strong protest against the despised ``fart tax'', and he was an outspoken critic of working dogs being initially included for microchipping. Small wins, he admits, but large in principle.

He is hot about farmers retaining their property rights against increasing regulatory, legislative and planning pressures. Any encroachment on these rights the property owners will need to be well compensated for, he says.

Nicolson says farmers do not mind paying their fair share of taxes and rates. But their "rightful chunk'' has been diminishing every year, he says, as the taxman, local government and middlemen take their slice of profits from the farm business.

He despairs at the anti-farmer campaign which seems to be gaining more traction as food prices rise.

"Farmers are getting 15 per cent to 18m per cent of supermarket production and that's not enough. The consumers think that the farmers are screwing them, but they need to open their eyes, and listen to our story.

"Each kilogram of milk protein is feeding so many people outside of the farm gate, yet we seem to get so little respect in the community.''

That said, he says farmers do not underestimate the power of the consumer.

In his spare time, Nicolson likes to spend time with his family, and he follows most sports. Perhaps less known about him outside Southland circles is that he owns the racehorse Sabicraft.

He has followed horse racing since his early teens. The temptation to put a bet on the horses was removed, however, at a young age, when $150 of hard-earned pocket money from crutching and shearing was lost.
His first racehorse, Phar Star, was scratched in its first start and finished last in its next and final race. Another horse never made it to the races.

Learning from this shaky start, Nicolson and his trainer, Lisa Vaughan, selected the next horse, a rising two-year-old chestnut filly from Birchwood Station in central Southland.

The horse began racing as a four-year-old and ran two close seconds and a fourth before winning the next two races and finishing the season with a second in the Autumn Championship Gold Cup at Riccarton. Further success has followed, with earnings now at  $92,200 from 32 starts.

Horse racing will continue to provide a break from the intensity of his new position.

The critical issues he sees confronting Federated Farmers in the next few years are retaining farmers' rights to farm, combating those reef fish and tackling the carbon-emission debate. Beyond this lie RMA reform and reversing high local-government costs, which are putting pressure on farmers.
Farmers have to be united in their stand against these issues, says Nicolson.

"We need to have 24 provinces in our national structure speaking in one voice. I am sure on the biggest issues that we all speak the same language. There will always be opposing views within council, and that is where they should stay, because (otherwise) it weakens our influence. A collective voice is vital for the food production of this country.''

Nicolson may never match Pedersen's super-cool cellphone ringtone of Hot Chocolate crooning Everyone's a Winner, but time will tell if he follows the outspoken style of his predecessor  or chooses to march to his own tune.