‘Don’t write off dairying’

 Bull was honoured for his services to farming and the community including leadership roles in the dairy industry from the 1970s and his philanthropic work mainly through the Rotary Club.

“Despite the critics you will find dairying is a major industry in New Zealand for many, many years,” he told Dairy News.

 “It has its ups and downs – it’s in a down at the moment but it is a temporary. 

“As a career for young people, men and women, I wouldn’t have wanted to have done anything else. You are working with animals, the land, you have a responsibility to nurture the land.”

Bull started out as a farm worker then sharemilker in the 1950s and moved to his own farm in Whakatane with his wife Teresa in 1972. He became involved in dairy governance including Feds, director and chairman of the Rangatikei Plains Dairy Company, deputy chairman of the New Zealand Dairy Board, a director of the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand and involvement in the merger of several dairy companies to form Bay Milk Products.

Bull supposedly retired from dairying 18 months ago when he sold the Whakatane farm which he grew from a 220 cow to a 850 cow operation over the years. He still lives in the homestead. But instead of putting his feet up, he is now voluntary farm supervisor for the Owhakatoro Lands Trust at Ruatoki after being asked to help get the 600-cow farm back on its feet. He has been running the farm and also helping trustees learn the role of governance – “for any business today your governance has to be sound and you have to be on the ball. We are making good progress.”

Bull first joined Young Farmers in the 1950s and was later chairman of Awakeri Young Farmers Club. “We learnt everything there … in the days before AgITO that was very important for young people who wanted a career in farming.” 

In 1974 he became active in the wider industry including Bay of Plenty Feds dairy chairman and won a Nuffield Scholar to in England for six months. Last week a young Nuffield scholar from England was visiting him, the son of another Nuffield scholar he met during that time in England.

“The contacts that were made back then whether it was dairy, Nuffield or Rotary, I have found a great strength. I have valued having friendships around the world.”

He spent 10 years on the New Zealand Dairy Board from 1987 to 1997 when Bay Milk merged with the New Zealand Co-op Dairy Company and Bull stood down from the Dairy Board.

Bull has been involved with Rotary since the 1970s holding a number of positions with the Whakatane West club and enjoys voluntary work in New Zealand and offshore, particular in developing countries such as Fiji or Samoa. In Samoa he helped establish preschools for Samoan children which had to be rebuilt after the 2009 tsunami in which some of the children tragically died.

In Fiji the Rotary Club has been involved with a farm training establishment on Taveuni Island and other development works. He says his voluntary work gives him great satisfaction.

But he also strongly appreciates the people he has worked with in dairy over the years. 

“The directors in the industry were a bunch of great guys who in those days virtually volunteered their time.” He says he has also met some wonderful people and seen some great things being done by executives and workers in the wider industry.

“And the support services … there’s DairyNZ or the Ministry for Primary Industries, we can’t operate without them. We need the strength of those people.”

Undervalued by govt.

Doug Bull is worried that agriculture, in particular dairying, has become less valued by Government over the last decade.

“When I started off dairying many people in the Government’s Cabinet were dairy industry people – today it is a sad observation that despite dairy being such a great contributor to this country, the Minister of Agriculture seems to have fallen further and further down the ranks of cabinet ministers. 

“His representation of such a great industry does not seem to be so valued by Government. That is not just now – it has been happening over the last decade or so. I think we need the horsepower as an industry at that Cabinet table.”