WORDS AND IMAGES BY ANNIE STUDHOLME
After leaving school, she attended the University of Waikato, completing a degree in Management Studies, majoring in accounting. Having inherited her parent’s passion for agriculture, Rhea started as a student accountant for Fonterra working at the Hautapu factory in the manufacturing team.
It was here that Rhea realised she could utilise both her passions for agriculture and accounting. “I don’t enjoy tax or auditing,” she says. “I like to be involved in the nuts and bolts of a business, trying to run a smoother engine and improve performance. My skillset is management accounting which is more hands on as opposed to financial accounting. It’s about looking forward and improving the drivers of performance.”
After leaving Fonterra, Rhea worked for the packaging company Pact Group Limited before heading off on her OE. On her return, she worked as part of Beef + Lamb New Zealand’s Economic Service, first in Northland and then in Canterbury and Otago.
Formed back in the 1950s, the Economic Service surveys farms throughout New Zealand to provide a sound base for forecasts of meat and wool production and trends in the sector by linking physical production together with financial returns and the capital structure of farms. It produces the sheep and beef mid-season update in February, and in September each year, it publishes its estimate of the actual farm situation for the new season ahead.
“What I loved about the role was being able to work directly with farmers and learning more about the sheep and beef industry and their challenges,” says Rhea.
Attracted by the large-scale farming operations, she and husband, James Booker, decided to move to Canterbury in 2015. Rhea initially continued her job with Beef + Lamb NZ. Later she took on the role as Management Accountant for Ashburton-based Midlands Apiaries Limited and new start-up, Kaipak Limited. Rhea then moved into a Systems Accountant role for the Midlands Group focused on improving systems, both process and IT, in order that the whole business could get greater efficiency and value from its technology investment and process design.
“I first try to get the best out of the systems they already have in place, and if it isn’t going to meet the needs of the business, introduce new ones,” explains Rhea. Essentially, the goal posts are to generate reliable and accurate information so staff, management and board can make informed decisions. A significant portion of her work has been self-driven, guiding the business owners and stakeholders in understanding business capability and delivering on goals.
Once they started having a family, Rhea became self-employed, initially contracting back to Midlands Holdings. They welcomed their son William (now 4) in 2018, followed by Adalene (now 2) in 2020.
She now splits her time between raising their two children, contracting to Ashburton Contracting Limited, improving their systems, quality of information and reporting, and contracting to Rural Business Accountants. She is also treasurer of the Methven Care Trust and Methven Preschool. Both are voluntary positions.
James is currently the Canterbury Regional Manager for Southern Pastures, based outside Rakaia, a business where he oversees operations across nine dairy farms.
Together with Rhea, they are part-owners in Maatua Hou, a calf-rearing business set on a 34-ha irrigated block near Burnham. Maatua Hou (which means new parents) is the brainchild of four young couples with children working together to reduce the number of bobby calves in the industry and provide quality dairy beef calves to the beef industry. Together they have formed an equity partnership, bought a block of land, and found a group of farmers willing to supply them with calves that would have otherwise been destined for the bobby truck, entering into a profit-share agreement.
Unlike traditional calf-rearing operations where the owner buys the calf outright, at Maatua Hou the suppliers retain ownership of the calves and share in the rearing expenses. “It’s a win-win,” says Rhea.
“For us, it means we don’t have to buy calves, it reduces risk and the burden of overall costs leading to a more stable business. Whereas, for dairy farmers, it offers them a viable alternative to putting bobby calves on the truck at four days old.” Maatua Hou acts as the middle ground for the growing stage of the calves’ lives before returning them to be finished or sold at over 100kg.
Maatua Hou’s calves come from heifers in their first mating and early calving mixed-age cows that dairy farmers don’t need replacement calves from. The calves arrive, on average, at seven to eight days old, meaning they can remain on whole milk for longer after the initial colostrum feed. The owners go to the farms to check out their health. They pick them up on trailers, 30 to 40 at a time, themselves to ensure their travel times are reduced and drop them directly into their pens to minimise stress. Once they arrive on-farm, calves are fed once a day, with a weight-gain target of around 600g per day with this increasing as they get older.
Maatua Hou’s continual appetite for innovation was rewarded by picking up last year’s Innovative Farming silverware at the Beef + Lamb New Zealand Awards.
Admittedly though, there was still much to learn, says Rhea. Initially, they started out rearing 600 calves, but this season they’ve reduced it to 200. It’s about doing fewer calves and doing them better in a bid to establish the right staff-to-calf ratio and cashflow per calf. Going forward, they intend to duplicate this year’s successful model with smaller numbers and increase that to 600 calves.
“We firmly believe there will come a time where the scale of the current bobby calf sector will contract as both milk and meat processors deal with consumer pressures; we want to be part of the solution,” says Rhea.
While she appreciates a lot of regulations are being placed on farmers now, she says it’s crucial not to get caught up in the negative. “Farming has always had challenges…. just look at the1980s. Farmers adapt, play to their strengths and carry on. The industry is filled with amazing people, and when you have great people, you can achieve great things.”
Rhea says she is excited about putting her skills to use as part of the Ruralco Board. “I love business, and if I can align that with agriculture, brilliant. Ruralco has an amazing culture; it is something you can’t script, you can’t get it out of a book; you either have it or you don’t, and I am proud to be a part of the Ruralco team.”
She believes her practical business operations experience, including that in performance reporting, project management, and introducing new technologies puts her in good stead to add value. “This is an amazing opportunity for me; I am surrounded by great minds. I’d like to think that my skillset coming from the other side of the board table and being in the engine room will be of benefit, and I look forward to contributing my experience to the board.”