Pita Alexander, a chartered accountant, has been the agribusiness accountancy sector for over 35 years, and is also the founder of Alexander’s – a leading agribusiness, accountancy and advisory firm based in Christchurch. Pita’s early life experiences taught him a lot about financial management through working hard and the value of saving. He studied a Bachelor of Commerce, and worked at the likes of the Rural Bank and Pyne Gould Guinness Trust Department, where he worked his way up the accountancy ranks. In 1972, Pita set up his own practice. Pita says he has enormous job satisfaction, and always has done, because he loves working for farming couples and finds it a very satisfying way to make a living. Pita is also passionate about financial education, and the need for more education for our young people around things such as compound interest, how money works, budgeting, money management and discipline.
For Pita, sustainability ‘starts around the kitchen table’. 30% of people in New Zealand are poor with money, and Pita attributes this to that they don’t learn anything across the kitchen table. A cycle perpetuates where if these learnings aren’t handed down to the next generation at an early age, then money management becomes an issue for people later on in life. Good financial management, planning and practice is a critical part of life, and being better with money isn’t something Pita sees us making much progress with in New Zealand. He emphasises that we need to be able to have financial reserves in order to deal with shocks, and that being in a strong financial position is something that can’t be competed with.
“If you give any businessperson, if they have the ability, they’re good at their job, they’re good at developing cash, they build up some financial reserves. I’m not talking about someone being greedy and what have you but building financial reserves is a great thing for any man or woman running a business, they know that if things slip and let’s at the moment, for example, the world’s hardly ever been so fragile as it is right now, hardly ever been so fragile. If ever was the time to have financial reserve. I’m not talking about an emergency fund, but that’s a smaller, different approach. They need financial reserves above the emergency fund to cope with this volatility. And on top of that, I’ll guarantee they’ll be a better partner and I’ll guarantee they’ll be a better parent, if they have this, this strong financial situation. I act for a lot of very good farmers, and you’ll find if you dig into it, they are getting this emotional support from having a strong financial position. There’s hardly anything that competes with it.”
SDG #8: Decent work and economic growth
SDG 8 aims to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. One of the targets under this goal, Target 8.2, is around achieving higher levels of economic productivity through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high value and labour intensive sectors. When questioned on how this might apply to New Zealand agriculture, Pita emphasised that it will only be the top two farming quartiles that will be interested in that approach.
“If you’re actually being absolutely honest, you won’t find that the bottom quartile in any farming country actually moves much out of that quartile, right? It’s just we like to think that we can take a bottom quartile, farmer or businessperson and move them up the ranks into a top quartile. Well, that never happens. You might move them into the bottom of the next quartile, so it’s only the top two quartiles that you’ll find you’ll get real interest in using innovation and improving things and improving their output. The bottom quartile in particular are very comfortable with just getting enough cash in the system to keep family and themselves going. They can still be good in the community, but in the sense of improving the country and the farm’s output, you won’t find much goes on. I struck that many times in my troubleshooting , but they were still good people to deal with.”
“At a certain point New Zealand is going to be mature in the sense of a lot of its farm production. And it’s going to get back to marketing and innovation, sometimes reduced costs, but strategic thinking, it won’t be how to increase the production itself. It will be strategic thinking and making use of that production.”
Farming of any type comes with highs and lows, and Pita has three key tips for riding those highs and lows:
When it comes to the SDG’s, the one that is most aligned with personally is that of gender equality. The difference between male and female salaries in New Zealand at the moment is 9.2%. However, since 1972 when Pita started his practice, men and female staff with the same qualifications, ability and experience have always been paid the same.
Pita’s take on challenges regarding sustainability in NZ Agriculture, and his take-home tip
When it comes to challenges, Pita sees that we are lacking good strong leadership in a number of areas in our country, which is going to make sustainability a hard task. He also adds that there needs to be a change in the narrative around whose problem things like emissions are – that they are not just relevant to farmers, and not just a farming problem, but that it’s in the interest of all people in New Zealand.
“I would have thought that it’s in the interests of every urban person as well to have a country that, if it has to reduce its exports or it has to make them more sustainable in the sense of emissions, it’s good for the whole country, not just debiting every single sheep and beef and dairy farmer in the country with the problem that we don’t seem to be taking that view. If people on the other side of the world are going to only buy our produce because we’ve done something with emissions, then we probably have to follow that line. But I don’t think we should be debiting just farmers. I think it’s a New Zealand people’s issue and needs to be dealt with in that way.”
Pita sees opportunity in the leadership space and that a lot of top companies in New Zealand send people to American Universities for a period of time to get themselves involved and learning about higher level of management and governance. “We need to be encouraging our top people to get better at what they do”.
“I have sat down in Dallas at a meeting with an individual who…just seemed to be an ordinary individual. He was an engineer. In the in the morning tea break we both got talking and he said he had a very good engineering business in New York. He got seconded by Obama. His salary went down, He didn’t give an exact figure, but he said I ended up with a peanut salary, but I worked for Obama for two years secondment and he said it was my way of injecting back into the industry, but he said it’s turned out that I’ve learned a terrific amount…So investing money in people is one of the best ways of getting better leadership.”
For Pita, his practical take home tip for sustainability is all about job satisfaction and enjoying what you do.
“If you’re enjoying it, you’ll be good at it, and you’ll take the trouble to make sure you understand the regulations. You listen to the top innovators. You take up the new ideas, maybe you’re not the first person to take it up, but you’ll be the second or third. You’ll take up the new ideas and the odd one won’t work, but you are moving with the times.
Sometimes I find I go into a farming situation and the individual, usually the man, is not actually enjoying it. For some reason, he took over the farm because Dad wanted him to, or mum wanted him to. I think it is a shame if you’re not getting job satisfaction 90% of the time. Don’t worry about 100%. In other words, head for excellence, forget perfection of 100, excellence is 90%. You need to be getting job satisfaction 90% of the time. The other 10% people will muck it up anyway. So don’t hope for more than 90%. If you’re getting a lot less than 90% job satisfaction, you’re in the wrong job.”
Listen to Pita’s podcast episode here:
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