Patrick Malley Young Horticulturist of 2014

The 2014 winner of the Young Horticulturist of the Year is Patrick Malley who co-owns a kiwifruit and avocado orchard with his parents in Northland.

Patrick and his wife Rebecca have been orcharding for the past four years with Patrick’s parents Dermot and Linzi. Patrick has a degree in commerce and Rebecca in veterinary science, and both have since graduated with level 4 production management certificates in horticulture. They have a young son.

For the Young Horticulturist of the Year competition, Patrick had to research and write a market innovation project and take part in a two day final which included practical activities, computer management skills, presentation skills and an interview by a panel of judges. Then he had to present a three minute speech on his chosen topic.

His topic was how to encourage young people into horticulture by emphasising the successes of the industry, not the negatives and making sure young people heard those success stories.

He won the national title as well as the Fruitfed Supplies Leadership ward, the Primary ITO Career Development award and the AGMARDT Market Innovation Project for his traceability technology for kiwifruit, which would enable a consumer anywhere in the world to be able to scan kiwifruit packing codes to identify the orchard where the fruit grew.

Patrick is a director and contracting manager of family company Onyx Capital, which owns a 24ha orchard at Maungatapere and runs a contracting labour service for local orchards. Onyx is an Irish family name which means “strong”.

Their orchard Ararimu has a very strong focus on biosecurity, production, fruit quality, social and environmental awareness. It has 14ha in kiwifruit, mainly Hort 16A Gold, with the rest in Sun Gold, Hayward and Sweet Green varieties, and 3.5ha of 30 year old Hass avocado trees.

In 2012 Patrick formed a contract gang to provide horticulture workers to the local growers. The business has a focus on quality for the work completed as well as providing year round work for staff. He has 45 staff at the moment for kiwifruit harvesting, which slims down to 25 full time equivalent workers for the rest of the year.

He also pays his staff the living wage of $18.50 an hour.

The contracting crew works in approximately 20 kiwifruit orchards and about 40 avocado orchards, and in two orchards, Patrick has a full management contract.

In addition to the Young Grower & Horticulturist competitions, the family company has also won three awards in the Northland Ballance Farm Environment Awards – the Massey University Discovery Award, the PGG Wrightson Land and Life Award and the Waterforce Integrated Management Award, as well as the Large Business Category Award at the Northland Business Excellence Awards.

Patrick entered the Young Horticulturist competition because he has a strong sense of competition and is always striving for excellence which he attributes to his work and taking part in motor sport.

Because there was no local competition, he first entered the Bay of Plenty Young Grower competition last year, and won it on a tie-breaker. The tie breaker was a three sentence speech on what he wanted to do in horticulture in the next five years: “I want to provide a place in horticulture for myself and my staff in general, and provide the leadership and opportunities for other people up here to succeed in the industry.”

Then he headed to Christchurch for the Young Fruit Grower Competition, which he won before going on to the national competition for Young Horticulturist, which also included nursery, landscaping, viticulture and arboriculture contestants.

Just after this competition, the family entered the Northland Business Excellence Awards, winning the large business category.

“I love orcharding. I enjoy the business and being outdoors. I love horticulture, because of the lifestyle and the variety of work.”

Winning last year’s competition has given him very good networks within the industry, and he’s met a whole new range of people he never would have met if he was simply growing fruit in Whangarei.

“I am hoping that in the future what I have done will hold me in good stead. It broke the ice as much as anything else.”

He hopes his win will inspire his workers to enter, and says there are excellent management opportunities in horticulture. “You have to show them the path and then make them believe they can do it. The guys we have working here wouldn’t have had full time employment before. They are great sportspeople and know how to win on the sports field, but they haven’t been shown how to do that at work.”

Nicola Rochester was hooked on the competition the first time she went to the finals dinner. “I just got inspired and so excited. When you look around the room it is a who’s who of NZ horticulture, they are great people, smart people, successful people at all levels, and you feel really good about being part of it.”

Now she is the chairperson of the Royal NZ Institute of Horticulture Education Trust which administers the competition and says the past decade of competition has been positive for horticulture at all levels of the industry.

“It supports young people, promotes careers in horticulture and grows the capability of young people across all industry sectors.”

“Each year more than 60 talented young people have been identified and supported, all with a high probability of going on to leadership roles in the industry. This co-incides with the government objective of increasing skilled and qualified workers in the horticulture industry.”

The competition has seven different sectors feeding into it: viticulture through NZ Winegrowers, landscaping, flower growing, the nursery and garden industry, the vegetable and fruit sectors and amenity horticulture.

“Every year we think the competition can’t possibly be better than last year, but every year it is. Every year people are more committed to it.

“There are three partnering sponsors, AGMARDT, Fruitfed Supplies and T&G, and it’s strategically important to them to identify emerging young leaders in horticulture. Their businesses need them. They are really committed to it.”

She says Patrick won last year through dogged determination. “He was well prepared, even though he had a newborn baby and wasn’t operating on too many hours’ sleep. He was really focussed and determined to win. He won the AGMARDT innovation project, which is really significant. He also had pressure because he was right on the 30 years of age cut off, so he couldn’t have given the competition another go.”

The benefits of the competition are multi-faceted:

• It identifies emerging leaders
• They then are mentored and supported through the competition
• This gives them longevity within the industry as they grow and develop
• They get to glimpse how broad and diverse horticulture is
• It gives young people security that there is a career path for them

“Horticulture is an unsung hero really. It earns more than five times the export dollars per ha than dairying. Horticulture covers 123,000ha in NZ and produces $3.5b in exports, compared with 11m ha in pastoral production earning $20b in exports.”

“By 2025 we need 15,000 more qualified workers in the industry. That was the reason the competition was set up 10 years ago. The training organisation at the time, HortITO, commissioned a report which found young people were entering the industry and not staying because they couldn’t see a career path.”

“They started the competition to help address those issues and approached the Royal Institute of Horticulture’s Education Trust to be the independent body to run the competition. This is how it all started. And now it has a life of its own. We are all volunteers in the Educational Trust, and we make sure every dollar we spend is spent well. We wouldn’t be able to run the competition without Elenka Nikoloff, our event manager. She is certainly a big part of why it is so successful.”

See www.younghort.co.nz for more details