I’m Charlie McCaig. I've been in New Zealand for 16 years, originally from the UK and my farming career pre LIC was all in New Zealand. I didn't farm in the UK at all, I started off working on farms and progressed through the industry in various share milking roles, and won the share milker of the year in 2014, which was cool. I ended up in an equity partnership on a thousand cow dairy operation in Taranaki, but then left that three years ago to work for Dairy NZ for a couple of years and then joined FarmWise nine months ago.
I love living in Taranaki, we've got the mountain on our doorstep, which is great. So I get up there as often as I can. I'm quite into physical fitness in general, so I do CrossFit, hikes and mountain biking, but then also really enjoy sitting down and watching a movie with my two boys.
What brings me to FarmWise?
What I like about consultancy is working alongside farmers to help them achieve goals, improve their performance. I'm solutions focused and I like action, but I also like working in teams and solving challenges. I know farming and I understand it, and there's nothing more enjoyable than a farm chat to someone who's farmed. Farming gets into you, it occupies your whole being.
Today, I’m looking at the challenges farmers are going to be facing over the next five to 10 years and how do we set FarmWise consultancy services up to effectively meet those, help our clients meet those challenges, set them up for the future, and make sure they're well prepared and resilient.
We are very focused on applied solutions. Anyone can come up with a model that's going to show how you can cut your greenhouse gases by 20%, but operationalising that model is the real challenge. That's where FarmWise is head and shoulders above the others out there because all of our team are productivity focused consultants. They're not engineers, they're not program leads, they're not project managers, they're boots on the ground. And the sector really needs that.
I like to think of FarmWise as a big tent. There's all these different personalities and approaches and styles within it, but the great thing about a big tent is it provides protection from passing storms. So being part of a bigger thing provides security and it's a great place to be - whereas being out on your own can be a bit lonely.
