Denise is an agribusiness consultant specialising in dairy farming advisory. She joined the AgFirst team in 2023 bringing with her 15 years of practical farming and professional agribusiness experience.

Having worked her way up from farm assistant to herd-owning sharemilker together with her partner, she has a deep understanding of what it takes to run a profitable and compliant dairy farming operation. Her professional background is in farm system analysis, agricultural extension, ruminant nutrition and environmental management.

Denise is passionate about supporting farmers to achieve both their business and on-farm goals.

Key Skills

• Farm system planning and analysis
• Financial management (budgeting and benchmarking)
• Farmax dairy business modelling
• Farm supervision
• Organic farm system planning
• Staff recruitment and training
• Event facilitation and presentation skills

Qualifications

• Master of Science in Livestock Sciences (majoring in dairy nutrition and genetics)
• Bachelor of Organic Agricultural Science (Hons)
• Intermediate Nutrient Management Course

• Body Condition Scoring accredited
• AWDT Next Level – agricultural leadership and governance course
• NZIPIM Associate Member
• Hans-Martin Research Award (2013) for examining work strain during milking in different cow sheds based on shed’s and milker’s physical characteristics

Work History

2017 to 2022 Consulting Officer at DairyNZ

Connecting farmers with current research and facilitating farmer to farmer learning

2014 to 2017 Full-time on farm

From herd manager on 600-cow split calving farm to contract milker on 520-cow
farm

2014 Research technician for European Pro Pig project

Data collection on health, nutrition and environmental footprint of organically
farmed pigs

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