Mark Williams

Mark’s role sees him involved in ‘a massive width and breadth of DairyNZ activities’. While mainly office-based, he also gets out to farming and learning events – no two workdays are the same.

“I love working with different people across DairyNZ and the wider sector,” says Mark. “My strength is bringing together skills and experience from 15 years of farming, agribusiness banking, private consulting and working at DairyNZ to build solutions for farmers. This passion started with a Bachelor of Science degree, and a Graduate Diploma in Agribusiness providing a foundation for my future.”

Today’s farm systems are complex, says Mark.

“So bringing farmers together to share ideas – and providing them with evidence-based science, information, and resources to help with solutions – is core to why DairyNZ exists. We also want to make sure farmers are involved in the science and can bring it to life in a farm system. So, we gain from the farmers just as much as they gain from us.”

Within the farm systems team, Mark’s main role is to lead the integrated content process.

“I do this through continual communication with programmes of work and project teams, to ensure up-to-date content that helps farmers make good business and farm management decisions is available. We share this information with farmers in a variety of ways, including face-to-face chats with farmers and farmer groups, or through channels such as our publications and website.”

Mark also works on projects within DairyNZ and with sector partners like AgResearch and Beef and Lamb, and gets involved in events occasionally. However, he’s mostly office-based, leading the creation of content for DairyNZ’s communication channels.

“I review different messaging going out, and I am involved in farmer stories for our quarterly publication, Inside Dairy. That involves getting top-performing farmers’ stories into the publication and ensuring those stories are credible for its readers,” he says.

“We have amazing people working here at DairyNZ, who genuinely have the best interests of farmers at the centre of what we do.”

• Find out more about DairyNZ’s other specialist team members.
• Check out our research team and our regional teams.