Vaughan Jones has done it again.

For the third time, he’s taken out the prestigious Ashburton A&P Association’s Winter Feed Competition with his standout fodder beet crop.

Jones credits a mix of old-school farming values and good support for his continued success.

“I have created a formula we replay every year, and I get consistent results,” he says.

“Timing is very important, and I’ve had good support from Dan Copland from PGG. He’s a very good agronomist.”

Jones handles all his own drilling and cultivating—something he believes gives him the edge.

“Doing your own drilling, that’s where you beat your competition.

Contractors go twice the speed I do with the same gear.

“You can’t do anything to make up for lack of seed population.”

Jones sees the competition as a chance for connection as well as assessment.

“It’s good comradery with the added bonus of getting a yield assessment thrown in,” he says.

“You drive around, have lunch, have a good laugh with the reps, and it’s on a casual basis—not a formal basis—so people can just relax.

“It’s good for the A&P Association, that’s another association that’s at risk of being forgotten.”

Jones runs a substantial farming operation on two fronts: a 300-hectare dairy farm in Dorie, milking 1100 cows, which he purchased in 2013 after his parents converted it the year prior; and a 270-hectare cropping farm near the coast.

But despite his growth, Jones says arable farming remains a tough game.

“I treat vegetables different to cropping. With carrots, onions and potatoes – those guys are always harvesting. It’s the same as dairy. But crop farmers – it’s twelve days a year. It’s a horrendous business model.”

With commodity prices and property sales on the rise, some are comparing the current climate to the dairy boom of the 2000s.

But Jones is skeptical.

He calls it a “window of opportunity”—and a fragile one.

Jones said a change of government and rollback on eased regulations could hit the industry hard.

“If National doesn’t get in again, we are in deep,” he said.

Regardless of political winds, one pressure remains constant: labour.

While many look to automation as the fix to the labour shortage, Jones isn’t convinced.

He believes a more hands-on approach to farming is needed.

“We did it 15 or twenty years ago with the dairy boom. Dairy owners are now going to have to get their hands dirty.”

He recalls the words of the late Roger Letham, an Ashburton farmer turned real estate agent, who told him, “The best fertiliser on a farm is the owner’s footprints.”

Jones agrees.

“The eye of the owner sees so much—it’s called full sensory learning.”

He remains skeptical of automation as a catch-all solution.

“Automation is not automatic,” he says.

In fact, technology often adds complexity for his team.

“Technology puts more pressure on staff, because you have to upskill them,” he explains.

It also isn’t always cost-effective.

“It’s funny, we’ve just put an auto-drafting gate in. I’ve had more contractors come out to fix it than I have had on the property in the last six months.

“It cost me $10,000, but that $10,000 I could have paid for a worker’s partner to stand there and draft my cows. And that would be more accurate. And somebody gets the money who wouldn’t normally, so everyone’s better off than sending money to some autodrafting company in Australia.”

Jones says too much automation can distance the farmer from their land.

“They’re farming from their living room at four in the morning, so they don’t have to get up and draft.”

And that detachment, he said, carries a long-term risk.

“The biggest risk to farming is a generational loss of desire—a reluctance to get your hands dirty.”

For that reason, trends like flexible milking aren’t part of Jones’s system.

He prefers a traditional approach, which he believes is better for the animals.

“Cows are creatures of habit. Constantly changing milking times will not benefit the cow.”

Rather than relying on milking schedules to maintain condition, Jones focuses on feed management.

“Because I’m milking twice per day, I only have a ten-hour window to feed them properly. Then another ten, because there is four hours standing in the cow shed.

So, I have ten and ten to correct it—or eight and twelve. So, the pressure is on me to manage it well.”

His advice for young farmers entering the industry is simple—and consistent with the philosophy he lives by:

“Don’t stop working. It’s money for jam if you work hard and get your hands dirty.”

By Claire Inkson