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Jim Brooker (83), of Darfield, was an interested spectator at this year’s NZ Ploughing Champion.
Jim Brooker (83), of Darfield, recalls winning the first NZ Ploughing Championship at Oamaru in 1956 when he was 23 years old.
The sponsor was the Atlantic Oil Company, the NZ division of the Esso Oils and Fuel Company. The first prize was a round-the-world air ticket with Canadian Pacific Airlines, including flights to Hawaii and Vancouver, a train trip through the Rockies to Toronto, then a flight to Shillingford near Oxford, UK.
There a tractor and plough were provided by International Harvester Company – a B250 tractor and an Ace 8 plough.
“At 83 years old I remember the details probably easier than things that happen today,” says Brooker.
He finished 11th out of 25 ploughmen from 13 countries. He was farewelled from NZ by Prime Minister Sid Holland and his Minister of Agriculture Keith Holyoake.
“When I arrived to plough in UK, I was the only contestant who did not have a manager, judge or coach.”
Brooker started ploughing after he left school at 15 and worked on the family farm at Hawarden, North Canterbury, also doing shearing. He first competed using a plough borrowed from the neighbours – a TEA 24 and a two-furrow, Fergusson plough. All ploughing events were then run by Young Farmers clubs.
He qualified at an YFC event at Amuri, North Canterbury, and at 23 won the first New Zealand Ploughing Association final, using his dad’s IH W4 and an IH Ace plough. “That was a three-furrow plough that I changed to a two furrow.”
He recalls 26 competitors in a one-day event ploughing only grass.
Brooker bought his first 80ha farm at Lowburn, “covered in gorse” and over 13 years built it up to 324ha. It was flat, rolling to steep. He sold this and moved to 300ha at Kirwee, since built up to 567ha.
Ploughing champions Mark Dillon and Malcolm Taylor earned the right to represent the country at the World Ploughing Championships in Osijek, Croatia, on 5 and 6 September, after winning their titles at the New Zealand Ploughing Championships in Middlemarch in 2025.
Sean Leslie and Casey Tilson from Middlemarch, with horses Beau and Dough, took out the Rural News Horse Plough award at the Power Farming NZ Ploughing Championships at Horotiu, near Hamilton, on April 13-14.
The mood is relaxed as father and son ploughmen Paul and Derek Houghton get some practice in, but when the national championship starts this Saturday it will be a different story.
With our own National Fieldays only few weeks away, Rural News took the opportunity to take a trip overseas – as a guest of Enterprise Ireland, which invited 190 guests from 19 countries – to look at Ireland’s own national event, locally known as The Ploughing.
Ploughman Ian Woolly (Blenheim) and Malcolm Taylor (Putaruru) will represent NZ at next year’s World Ploughing championships in Ireland.
Oamaru-based livestock handling specialist Te Pari has bought Combi Clamp, the New Zealand manufacturer of Combi Clamp manual sheep handlers.
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has admitted that a scheme bringing workers from Pacific nations to work on orchards has become too hard to navigate but says changes are coming.
A new app designed in New Zealand aims to help sheep, beef and deer farmers capture, analyse and use body condition score data more effectively.
Canterbury farmer Andy Macfarlane has been appointed to the board of AgriZeroNZ, the public-private partnership designed to accelerate the development and deployment of emissions reduction tools for New Zealand farmers.
For over 50 years Mel Ewers has been supporting the apple sector navigate through compliance and quality assurance issues.
The apple sector is enjoying a bumper harvest season.
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