26- year-old Grant McNaughton had the greatest day of his life on Saturday, winning the National Bank Young Farmer Contest Grand Final in Gore.
It was a magnificent event spread over three days with the 7 finalists competing in an agricultural iron man to decide a worthy champion.
While Grant is the ultimate star, there was another contestant who also shone.The youngest competitor was 22-year-old Peter Gardyne, the local hero from Gore, representing the Otago Southland region and a member of a family of generational farmers in Southland.
While Grant was a second time finalist, having competed in 2007, Pete was new to it. In the regional contest, he’d beaten the favourite Elliott Scott to get to the final and then took on the best of New Zealand.
Three days of stringent testing lead to the final bell at around 8:30 Saturday night in front of a 1300 strong audience. After three tough days, just 11 points separated Grant from Peter.
The boys have to be prepared for anything. For example, they each get a visit from a bank manager who, in the middle of their conversation, has an epileptic fit.
They instantly have to perform first aid on him. It’s a contest to test your ability to react and perform.
In a sense, it was all for the best that Grant came through the winner. It was his last opportunity to win, with the rules stating you can only be a Grand Finalist twice. So Pete still has another opportunity to go the whole way.
To illustrate how close it was, in one section, the Agmardt Agribusiness Challenge, Grant and Pete tied first on 87 points. In cases of a tie, a countback is done and Grant won by 0.3 of a point and secured the Agmardt scholarship worth $9,500 to study at Cornell University in the United States. And he got there with 0.3 points to spare.
The life lesson? If the tide is going your way, it can carry you over the line.
It was a very consistent effort by Grant McNaughton and he’s a thoroughly deserving winner of New Zealand’s premiere farming competition. These guys devote a massive amount of time to the contest, some even giving up work for several months to study and prepare for the contest. But then it’s worth it with the winner getting a prize package worth $106,000.
So the man they call ‘Marmite’, because his smile is like the kid in the Marmite ads years ago, is the toast of Oamaru and will now assume the mana and prestige associated with being the 42nd winner of the Young Farmer Contest.
