Steven Rink wins 2025 Canterbury Young Grower title

Steven Rink has won the Canterbury 2025 Young Grower regional title.

Steven, who is production manager for Oakley’s Premium Fresh Vegetables in Southbridge, pitched his skills against three fellow contestants to take the title on Thursday 10 July.

He will now go on to compete against six other regional winners in the national Young Grower of the Year competition in Christchurch in September.  

Steven, aged 30, grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. He gained a degree in conservation and ecology from the University of Stellenbosch before heading to New Zealand in 2019 for what he planned to be a year of backpacking.

He was helping out at a wholesale nursery operation in Tauranga, overseeing the propagation and irrigation departments. However, when Covid struck in 2020, he found himself in lockdown in New Zealand, after deciding not to travel back to Cape Town.

“I loved it here,” he says. “When lockdown ended I went off and spent the rest of the year backpacking around New Zealand. I was fishing off a jetty in the Marlborough Sounds when I heard I’d got a job as a production assistant at Oakley’s.

“It was very different to my previous experiences in horticulture. Before I’d been driving older manual tractors whereas here at Oakley’s we have large scale, tech-driven machinery.

“We grow a lot of vegetables – including broccoli, pumpkin and beetroot. We are known for our potatoes, we have our own brand, Golden Gourmet. We also grow rotational cover crops.

“I was lucky to have an amazing manager, Lucas Rossi who gave me the space and tools to grow and learn and get to know all the systems. He invested a lot of time in me, and when he left last year to start his own agronomy business, he put me forward for his role.

“It’s just great. You spend all winter planning your crop rotations and gearing up for the season, then you spend spring flat-out planting. Irrigation and crop-monitoring keeps us busy over the summer and then comes the first day of harvest. There is no better feeling than harvest day when there are bins full of produce ready to be sent to the packhouse and then all over New Zealand, to feed people.”

The Canterbury competition was the first to be held in the region for several years, so all the contestants were first time entrants.

“It was amazing,” says Steven. “The contestants were a great crew and I can’t speak highly enough of the module co-ordinators. The modules were a mixture of the basics that we all need to know and also stuff that really stretched us. I had thought it would be nerve racking but it turned out to be really enjoyable.”

Steven says he feels the competition plays an important role in highlighting the young talented growers coming through the sector as well as exposing contestants to wider aspects of the industry.

“The sector has so many facets and you don’t see all sides. You might be growing things, but you aren’t necessarily dealing with the marketing and financial aspects of the crops – the competition encompasses a lot of that.”

Steve’s advice to other young people considering a career in horticulture is to “jump in and try it”.

“The industry is so broad and there are so many different opportunities. We have people here who love growing things and we have people who just love operating the big machinery.  Come and see what there is and you will find the pocket for you.”

Runner up was Brooke Chambers who is part of the operational team for Farm Right’s orchard development in Canterbury.

The competition celebrates the success of young people in the industry as well as encouraging others to consider a career in horticulture.

Regional organisers host and run the regional competitions  independently, with Horticulture New Zealand (HortNZ) hosting the final in a different part of the country each year.

Entry is open to both commercial fruit and vegetable growers from across the regions, up to the age of 30.

HortNZ chief executive Kate Scott said the competitions play an important role in highlighting the wide variety of different career opportunities in the industry.

“It is great to see the Canterbury competition back, celebrating the fantastic array of young grower talent in the region.

“Thank you to the organisers and to all the regional Young Grower organisers countrywide. The regional competitions and the national Young Grower of the Year final could not happen without the commitment of so many industry professionals across the country who give up their time to help organise them.

“They ensure we can celebrate the skilled young people who are pursuing careers in the sector and raise awareness of the many career opportunities it offers.”