Advance Party National Workshop

Advance Party National Workshops

Advance Party National Workshops are held annually to bring together members of Advance Parties from across the country to work on productivity improvement topics. Details on the National Workshops can be viewed here >>.

Advance Party National Workshop 2016

The second Advance Party National Workshop took place on 13 and 14 June in Methven. In a departure from a traditional conference, with speakers presenting prepared papers to an audience, the AP National Workshop took a very inclusive path. The purpose was to create opportunities for farmers to discuss their productivity issues in detail with their peers.

The Advance Party process follows the theory that farmers learn best off other farmers, therefore the purpose of the AP National Workshop was to create the environment where farmers could talk directly with other farmers in a facilitated small group, and address individual production and farming challenges with practical advice from other farmers. The groups were also joined by topic experts who could provide a best practice perspective if the group could not arrive at solutions, or if the advice offered was dramatically wrong. Each group was guided by a facilitator to keep the conversations on track, to record pertinent observations and to guide the discussion.

50 farmers from 15 advance parties registered to attend the event. 12 facilitators also participated.

36 group workshops were conducted with the most popular topics being decision support tools, winter feeding, velvet genetics and fawn survival.

9 Advance Parties also shared their experiences with the attendees as part of a story competition, linked below are the presentations from the different groups with the winners being Hawkes Bay as selected by the judging panel.

Advance Party Presentations 2016:

Hawkes Bay Fast Finishers

Mackenzie Country

North Canterbury

South Canterbury/North Otago

Read what else the AP groups have been up to here