DairyNZ manager seeks change of pace

 Through three droughts, eight floods, a global financial crisis and payout fluctuations Manjala has been there with information and events relevant and timely.

What a surprise, then, to farmers and rural professionals in Northland when Manjala resigned his DairyNZ role to become a business manager at Rabobank, Whangarei. Telephone calls and emails came thick and fast the day the news came out.

The Zimbabwean migrant has spent 10 years helping advance Northland’s dairy industry, first as a consulting officer then for seven years as regional manager for DairyNZ.

The bank asked him to fill a place on its business manager team and he decided it fitted his long-term career plans for local and international roles in agriculture. The post will allow him to explore aspects of the industry not accessible to him while working for DairyNZ.

The role will allow him to get up close and personal with many aspects of agriculture – drystock pastoral farming, cropping, horticulture and viticulture. “It will also give me the chance to work more one-to-one with farmers, helping them achieve their goals.”

“A drawcard was that Rabobank is the only 100% agri-bank in NZ, hence it takes a longer-term view and understands the up-and-down cycles of agriculture. 

“It has a co-op structure and more importantly the Whangarei branch has been the top performing branch in the country for two years.”

A quest for continual learning led him to accept the position which he says came out of the blue. ”The Nuffield scholarship in 2013 increased my appetite to keep growing professionally and personally. The business manager position will give me the next skills I need to develop.”

Taking on a business manager’s job will also give him more time for family and to expand the livestock rearing operation he runs on 40ha of leased land near his home. “The scarcest resource is time.” 

A chance meeting on a soccer pitch in 2005 led to his leasing the land where he runs about 200 drystock. The animals include week-old calves and two year-old bulls he seels to dairy farmers as terminal sires to put over the tail end.

Manjala says he won’t miss intensive demands on his time: he sometimes had to work 60-hour weeks during crises – there had been a fair few of these. But he will miss the advisory nature of the work with DairyNZ. He finds managing people extremely rewarding but always a challenge.

He hopes to be remembered for his passionate commitment to progressing dairy farming, for his timeliness in responding, and for leading two Northland DairyNZ’s great success stories – the Candy Focus Farm and the RepoRock project.

The projects’ success had depended on first getting the right partners on board (farmers and professionals) then working out as a team what the real issues were and how to influence behavior change by first influencing how farmers think about issues. “Keeping farmers in the driving seat of project development and delivery is the silver bullet if ever there is one.”

Manjala believed in the principles so much he put them into his Nuffield report on influencing change (see it on the Nuffield website). “I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at DairyNZ and I’m thankful for the opportunities and support the organisation has given me.”

A new Northland regional leader for DairyNZ is likely to be named before the end of November. Manjala says the appointee will take on a team that makes up for any shortages in experience with their positive attitude and robust farm systems training.

“Mission accomplished, but there is more work to be done.”