Passion for People with Myfanwy Alexander

Myfanwy Alexander is a contract milker running around 1000 cows in the Waitaki Valley halfway between Duntroon and Kurow. She wears many hats: a dairy farming mum of two, Provincial President for North Otago at Federated Farmers, and a regional leader for the Dairy Women’s Network. Growing up in the U.K., born in Wales, Myfanwy spent her childhood moving around university towns as her father was an academic. The eldest of seven girls, Myfanwy and her family moved back to Wales when she was starting high school and the community she lived in, and importantly the people, helped grow her love of farming from taking her under their wing. Helping in lambing sheds, milking and driving the scraper tractor cleaning out barns, Myfanwy’s love and passion for agriculture ‘skyrocketed’. She went to university to continue her passion for agriculture, and with work experience being a key part of her degree, she came across a chap who said to her that he could sort her out with work experience for two months calving cows in New Zealand. Jumping at the chance, Myfanwy fell even more in love with farming once she came to New Zealand as farming here was much more exciting than in the U.K. She went back home to Wales to finish her degree, and as soon as it was over, she was back on the plane to New Zealand to come and do calving again, and here she remains 16 years later.

Myfanwy’s take on sustainability

When it comes to sustainability, Myfanwy is deeply passionate about the sustainable people systems.

“At the end of the day no other type of sustainability can be achieved without sustainable people systems. I find a lot in dairy that there’s a lot of working very hard for a certain amount of time, burning yourself out and then people leaving the industry or just being quite disheartened and losing the passion and joy. So, what I’d love to see is that our dairy sector just having a lot more people coming through because they’re building people coming behind them, who are also thriving in their roles, and that way we can fix a lot of the issues in dairying that end up happening because people are so burnt out that they’re unable to perform at their best. So, I think if we look after our people, everything else will sort itself out basically.”

People systems are so important but so is the way in which the person running those systems sees their people, and Myfanwy sees her employees as so much more than that.

“People always say ‘oh your staff members’; I like to refer to them as a team. We are a team. It doesn’t matter if you’re the junior guy who’s just arrived in the country, you’re just as important, we can’t do our day without you, and if you’ve got empowered team members in a sustainable, long-lasting system where they’re going to be happy for long time it makes business sense, aside from everything else.”

“It’s so much fun as well watching people thrive. And one of the things I think is everyone should be happy at work. If you’re happy, you’re keen to come to work, you’ll think of new and exciting ideas and ways to improve work for everyone. Yeah, I think just a happy team is the way forward for a sustainable team.”

Addressing the low-hanging sustainability fruit

Myfanwy has looked at sustainability through a people-first lens, and creating a culture where people are seen and valued as individuals, which has served her well in creating a strong and sustainable team on farm. Irrespective of what industry you work in, we all know what it’s like to be working your way up through your industry, says Myfanwy. You can remember how you felt and what mattered to you. It has also been important for Myfanwy to really get to know your staff members and what matters to them.

“So, we’ve got one chap here who really loves to go home for five weeks between June and July. Is it really the easiest time of year for us to lose people when we’re wintering crops? No, but does it make a huge difference to him? Of course. And it’s not just about giving them things, but it’s about just listening to what they might need and helping them out. But I think one of the most important things for staff and for anyone in the job is autonomy. And so, if they feel that they have an autonomy over their day or at least some kind of control and structure they can stick to.”

“We have a big whiteboard in the shed and especially at the main times of the year where we’re not super busy I’ll have the whole week planned ahead so everyone knows if they’re getting a sleep in, if they’ve got something on that night, they can come to me and say hey, look Saturday night we’ve got a big party. Awesome. You are not starting till lunchtime. That’s easy for me to do. I’ve spent many years dragging my backside into the milk cows at 4:00 AM when you’re not feeling up to it. But you know you can make a difference to their lives, and it’s such small tweaks.”

For Myfanwy, one of the lowest hanging fruits is to support each other and to say thank you to appreciate your staff.

“It boggles my mind. I know it’s a generational thing and I know us millennials grew up receiving an award for everything, so maybe it’s just millennial and me who likes to have a thank you or say a thank you. But people light up when you say thank you and you value them, and you appreciate them. That’s free. That’s absolutely free. And then suddenly you’ve got a team who want to stay with you no matter what, even if you’re having a bad year and financially you can’t buy the best bikes or things are a bit tough or you’re having a bad year weather wise, they’ll keep going for you, whereas others would just jump ship”.

The best piece of farming advice Myfanwy ever received

Years ago, Myfanwy was told ‘Don’t rely on anyone to help you out. Everyone’s in it for themselves’. Now, it might not seem like the best piece of advice, but it was a comment that added fuel to her fire – that no, not everyone is like that, and it doesn’t have to be that way.

“I think we can be in it for ourselves, so to speak, as in we want to further our careers, set ourselves up for retirement, make sure our children are well educated and provided for. But we can also make sure others around us are afforded the same. We don’t need to step over other people in order to get ahead. We can do it with supporting each other. Of course, it is on you, and I felt that over the years just me rearing the kids and having to take jobs that maybe didn’t at times pay as much as I needed to get ahead, but it’s all about the end goal, isn’t it? You just keep going and keep your end targets in mind and yeah, you’ll get there. And there are wonderful people around who will support you. So that’s a bit of a sideways best advice I ever had, but it always stuck with me.”

A key takeaway from this part of the conversation with Myfanwy was the importance of knowing that you can make such a difference to other people’s lives, and if you can, then why wouldn’t you? If you ensure that there is enough focus on the people within your business, that they are healthy, happy and thriving, then the results you wish to obtain in your business can come a lot quicker and with even better results.

Meeting the avalanche with positivity and embracing opportunity

There is a lot of change and uncertainty that farmers are facing at the moment with what feels like an avalanche of information, requirements and so on to get their heads around. It isn’t then surprising that many are feeling burnt out and overwhelmed at the prospect of continuing to stand up and face the challenges ahead. Myfanwy has been described as ‘relentlessly positive’, so she views the need for change as exciting and sees the opportunities that lay in front of us.

“I think there’s loads of exciting stuff coming at us. Yes, there’s a lot of silly bogged down paperwork, boring stuff coming at us, but if we look at the overview of what’s coming at us in the next 10 to 15 years, we have to make some big changes, we do. But isn’t that exciting? We aren’t farming the same way as we farmed 15 years ago when I first came here. So many things, I wouldn’t be thinking about a collar on a cow that was telling me all this information. I don’t know. I just I think yes, it can get a bit tiring. Yes, you can get burnt out by it but it’s all about attitude. And if you don’t go in with the attitude that you’re being forced to do these things then you look at ways to be proactive, getting ahead of the curve, and then when the things come at you, you’re like ‘Oh, we’re prepared’. And you won’t get it right all of the time, and we won’t. And we’ll have to change things. But that’s what we’ve done all the way through human history…. We are so good at dealing with the uncertainties in New Zealand. We’ve got great support for our farmers. I’ll bang the old Feds drum again. We’ve got people lobbying for us. We’ve got people sorting that side of things out. We’ve got people attending constantly. That may not always be the most fun, but at least we’re getting our points of view out there, and so long as we are sensible and open to change, I think it’s gonna be a pretty exciting few years ahead.”

Myfanwy’s Farming Business and the Sustainable Development Goals

When looking at how the SDGs are integrated through Myfanwy’s farming business from the full podcast conversation, there are a clear top five:

 

Goal #8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

• Myfanwy is passionate about being a good employer, but also as a contract milker she must look after her own equity and economic growth. She creates an environment where people are valued and want to stay in their jobs long term.

Goal #3: Good Health and Wellbeing

• This shines through with Myfanwy’s passion for looking after her workers, getting to know them and their circumstances, and ensuring good work-life balance leading to better mental health and wellbeing for her workers which flows through into outcomes on farm.

Goal #5: Gender Equality

• Informed by her own experiences as a solo mum with two young kids on farm, she is conscious of the juggle that some mums have while working and being the primary caregiver. She uses this experience to provide flexibility for female staff, but also being mindful of male staff needing to be able to adapt schedules due to helping with the family unit.

Goal #11: Sustainable Communities

• Myfanwy is deeply passionate about rural communities and the importance they have for her. She highly values giving back after the support she has received from the local Duntroon community and the wider Food and Fibre sector over her 16 years in New Zealand.

Goal #16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

• This shines through strongly with her contribution and role at Federated Farmers, and her work with the Dairy Women’s Network. The family is passionate about giving back to the Food and Fibre Sector and ensuring that our people are looked after within it.