Jack Haddon wins 2025 Pukekohe Young Grower title

Crop manager Jack Haddon has won the Pukekohe 2025 Young Grower regional title.

Haddon, who oversees the cauliflower and cabbage operation for Balle Bros, pitched his skills against three fellow contestants to take the title on Friday 23 May.  

He will now go on to compete against six other regional winners in Horticulture New Zealand’s national Young Grower of the Year competition, to be held in Christchurch in September.  

Haddon, aged 22, became interested in horticulture after getting a school holiday job with Sutherland Produce in Bombay when he was 15. He joined the company full-time at 17 and moved to Balle Bros in 2022.

“I had planned to train as a diesel mechanic but once I tried horticulture I decided I wanted to make that my career,” he says.

“There’s a lot to it. I like being outdoors a lot of the day but also the variety  - no day is ever the same - and the problem-solving involved.

“I’m operating large machinery and the complex systems and computers that run those. I’m using maths skills – for instance to work out the number of hectares you’ll be spraying and the application rates.

“There’s managing information and data, working with spreadsheets and know all about health and safety and risk management.

“I’m walking the crops every day and I need to know a lot about them and to be able to spot any issues. We grow 200 hectares of cauliflower and cabbage. It’s a 50-50 mix and cauliflower is quite a difficult plant to grow so it keeps me on my toes.”

It was Haddon’s second year entering the regional competition, with a Balle Brothers colleague winning last year.

He says he felt more confident this time and enjoyed working through the modules which included finance, pest and disease identification, compliance, health and safety and risk management, soil fertility, tractor operation, and marketing – where he wrote a 2000-word plan for marketing pizza bases made with cauliflower.

Haddon says he’s undergone a lot of on-the-job training as well as completing a Primary ITO outdoor crop production qualification.

“I started out planting broccoli and lettuce in my holiday job and steadily moved to other jobs including driving tractors and doing groundwork and harvesting. I became a manager 10 months ago.

“I want to continue to further my career with Balle Bros and work my way higher up in management and start looking after more crops.

“I see a really good future in the industry. I’m looking forward to the Young Grower of the Year final and I’m getting back to studying to prepare for it.”

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.

“Jack is a great example of the highly skilled young people in our sector, who are passionate about providing quality produce for New Zealanders and who are forging rewarding careers in the industry,” says Scott.

“Thank you to the many industry professionals who give up their time and put so much work into organising the Young Grower events.

The regional Young Grower competitions and the national Young Grower of the Year final could not happen without them.

“Thanks to their dedication we can celebrate the skilled young people who are pursuing careers in the sector and raise awareness of those career opportunities to others.”