The Takaka Rural Services Center is jointly owned by a large number of farmers and run as an incorporated society. It has a vet clinic for small and large animals, a farm merchandise retail store, a milking machine installation service and repair business with a 24 hour call out service, and a farm advisory service.
Their newly appointed chief executive officer and farm advisor is Kerry Giles, a man with over 30 years of related experience. He qualified with a masters degree at Massey University and joined the Ministry of Agriculture spending 14 years in Rotorua, at a time when the government departments were becoming much more commercially oriented. A major reshuffle of the advisory services saw Kerry enter private practice for 3 years before becoming involved with New Zealand Sheepac Ltd for 5 years as operations manager for the group, in the supervision and development of quarantine breeding programmes for imported exotic breeds, such as the Texel.
"It was really exciting to be involved in something completely new, and a couple of the breeds have gone on to make major contributions to the sheep industry," Kerry pointed out.
Kerry worked at selling deer velvet via auction to the Koreans and Chinese, and learning how to do business with the Asians, before joining a group of consultants in Rotorua, primarily involved in the conversion of a large number of large sheep farms owned by Maori incorporations, to dairy farms. His next role was with the Northland Dairy Company establishing a winter milking programme, developing systems and management techniques to help farmers calve part or all of their herds in the autumn and milk through the winter on a special winter contract. "Another quite innovative job, and quite successful," he said proudly.
He hopes to stay here in Takaka for sometime to continue to develop the RSC business he described as progressive, exciting and very successful. "And it's all about providing service to the farmers," he said. "We are looking at developing any new concepts that we think that farmers are looking for, and from what I've seen so far, I think there could be opportunities for education services, continuing education for farmers. Farming is becoming more and more a technically driven business and there are a lot of areas in terms of successful business management that farmers are always looking to improve in."
"That's one area, I'm sure there are all sorts of others that will come up in terms of easier access for farmers into the business," Kerry believes.
