The central Canterbury grower who pushed hard for Greendale grain being the secret ingredient behind a bread line in a televised campaign now has a second claim to fame.
With sleeves rolled up and a tractor behind him, Greendale farmer Syd Worsfold was insistent "it’s clearly Greendale rye" when a bunch of growers were questioned about the Ploughmans’ secret.
The light-hearted Ploughmans Bakery ad ran a few years ago with Mr Worsfold among Ashburton, Methven and Mayfield growers each praising the virtues of their locally grown grain or seed.
Mr Worsfold stepped into the limelight again when he was announced as only the second grower to be admitted to the Arable Hall of Fame in a Christchurch ceremony.
The supposedly retired farmer admitted to being completely floored hearing his name and being called to the stage.
"I thought I’d finished up with these things after getting a good send off by the wheat growers about four years ago following a meeting as my last turn as a director.
"I didn’t know who was coming up for it and had a bit of a guess that it was somebody who was there, but didn’t think it was me.
"There was about 600 people there and to get a standing ovation blows you away a wee bit."
When he first started farming in the 1970s on a 200ha property, cropping played second fiddle to about 2000 breeding sheep, as was the practice on many mixed farms until about a decade later.
"I remember the lowest I ever got for some works ewes after weaning was $2 a head and a lamb was worth $15 and I thought there was not a lot of future in this.
"An opportunity came up to purchase a farm on better cropping ground that was close to my parents’ home farm and we sort of swung much more to intensive cropping ... those days."
This change was seen more widely.
"Most of the properties were a mixed cropping and sheep operation then.
"A lot of them had gone into dairying now or tended to be more concentrated.
"Because the gear has got bigger and better you can grow a lot more crop, and irrigation development on a lot of the [Canterbury] Plains has allowed us to specialise in crops.
"The fattening of sheep is a big part of that in the winter times whereas before that it was a breeding flock mixed among arable crops.
"The range of crops we grow now is so much greater than they were then because of our soils and irrigation."
He went on to lease his parents’ farm before heart issues in the late 1990s to early 2000s made him readjust his workload.
This included stepping aside as chairman of the United Wheat Growers.
But he stayed on as vice-chairman under three chairmen to keep the continuity going when the board was reduced to four directors.
This community-first act was typical of the longest-serving United Wheat Growers director who was an inaugural member of the Foundation for Arable Research board and rose up the Federated Farmers ladder.
Nowadays his son Earl leases their property and neighbouring block as well as owning his own land.
Mr Worsfold has slowed down on the farming front, but still liked to be close to the action.
"We’ve still got the house and the yard so I can still keep an eye on what’s going on and help with the day-to-day things as needed."
Today, the family operation outside of Darfield runs a range of crops including milling, feed wheat, barley, peas and clover. Grass is grown for seed and goes on to support autumn arriving stock. Specialty radish and brassica crops are also grown for seed with this variety mix changing from one season to the next, unlike the cereal combinations.
For some time semi-retirement included growing wheat himself, but he parked this up as it was too complicated and time for the full transition to his son.
"I’m still out there for guidance and do a little bit of tractor work when I can, but I’ve had a couple of injuries that damaged my neck so that’s part of the reason I’ve stepped down too.
"I can still drive the tractor, but getting around is a bit harder and I have a four-wheel quadbike [so] I can tootle around the farm."
The former Arable Farmer of the Year, who won a Wheat Grower of the Year award in combination with his son, admired the depth of skills — extending to software and GPS advances and other technology — farmers need for arable growing today.
"That’s one of the things I do struggle with and I tell everyone I’m still stuck in the last millennium.
"The GPS stuff and all the electronic monitoring I just haven’t got a grip of.
"I’m mechanically minded but electronically minded I’m not.
"It’s when something goes wrong that worries me and the tractor stops and there’s nothing wrong mechanically with it, but a little electrical fault somewhere along the line.
"But what we can gain from all the satellites is getting better and better all the time.
"I think it’s marvellous, but beyond me and certainly the next generation is well up on that."
Mr Worsfold always preferred active farming over sitting in board rooms.
That was why he leaned more than farmer politics to represent the wheat growers’ body, although he did become the arable vice-chairman for Federated Farmers.
"I did a bit of that and was in Wellington, but it just wasn’t my scene.
"Dealing with the people buying your product and helping you to produce your product — how can we do this better and how can we help each other out — that was where I saw real pleasure in doing [it]."
During the Hall of Fame induction Mr Worsfold was singled out for his tireless work representing and advancing the arable industry over many decades.
The many hours sitting on committees and boards after full days of farming was done for the people and trying to make a difference, he said.
Among the highlights was being involved on the first board setting up the Foundation for Arable Research and being part of grower meetings finding solutions for the industry.
The foundation had grown to play a large role in keeping pace with environmental monitoring and providing information back to growers so they could perform better.
"The thing we didn’t foresee then was that as well as doing the agronomic work, it does the research and science that has to go into combating all the regulations and everything else we are farming under now.
"There’s been a twofold role now that I’m sure none of us foresaw when it was first established that has to be there.
"Credit to them, they’re a wonderful team which has grown a lot since then."
The small arable industry often flew under the radar as it was mostly concentrated in Canterbury, but the wide range of crops grown for food and stock feed was a vital cog for farming.
His decades’ long contribution began when the wheat industry was "quite political" as it was regulated until the late 1980s.
"When I first became involved it was very much an antagonistic thing between the wheat grower committees and the flour millers because in those days nearly all the wheat that was grown was for milling for bread and a lot of it was transported to the North Island.
"That’s been the biggest change I suppose in the wheat industry is probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the wheat grown is now feed wheat because the poultry has grown so huge and the dairy industry uses a lot as well as the pig industry.
"Now it’s easy to get Australian wheat here and it’s the cost of getting wheat to the North Island [that is a problem].
"I’m still involved with industry groups trying to sort ways through that.
"You are looking at $130 to $140 a tonne ... to get wheat into the North Island because it has to go on a ship.
"That just makes us uncompetitive compared with the wheat from Australia in the North Island which is a real shame."
He was unlikely to stop this work any time soon as it had been a passion throughout his farming career.
He felt he had the benefit of minders such as his father and good wheat growers passing on their wisdom, guiding and pushing him along, so it was only right that he did the same.
"I’ve been delighted to see a number of younger ones come through and now taking on some of those roles because it was becoming a bit of an old man’s club for a while."
He still plays a hand in the United Wheat Growers’ insurance scheme and provides advice to growers should hail, fire or other disaster devastate their crop.
"I’ve had a large hailstorm too so know what it’s like.
"It’s difficult to make rational decisions sometimes so to guide them through that with what the best process is — is satisfying.
"You sort of end up being a bit of a counsellor.
"I’ve probably been to nearly every farm that grows wheat in the county.
"I still help out a bit and my son’s on that too so I’ve handed on the baton there if you like."
tim.cronshaw@alliedpress.co.nz
