To help you understand and plan for change in your farm system, a list of the key skills that may differ across systems has been developed from the Dairy Industry Standard Roles, with input by farming systems specialists at DairyNZ and farmers from across the country.

• The project

  Farmers from Canterbury, Waikato and Northland joined focus groups to understand their ‘skills for success’ when operating farms ranging from systems 1 to 5. This was followed up with in-depth interviews to examine the skills important in their farm system.

  The experiences of these farmers have been summarised to provide tips about managing skills when changing your farm system.

  The outcome is nine main areas that change as your farm moves between the five farm systems. There are links to each of these areas at the bottom of this page.

If you are thinking about changing your farm system, for example from a system 2 to 4, or from system 5 to 3, click on the links in the graph below to see how our focus groups rated the importance of different skills for each farming system.

Different skills for different systems

Click the links below to see farmer experiences about the key skills in their systems.