Farm Forestry New ZealandNewsletter No 155, June 2025
Presidents Report
Dear NZFFA Member,
This is my first newsletter report since being elected as National President of NZFFA. It is a convenient way of sharing with you the work that your executive is doing. I am hopeful that I will be able to do this on a regular basis.
We are an association of regional branches and action group branches. You all belong to NZFFA through your membership with your respective branch. NZFFA exists because of its members and for its members. Your national executive has recently been focusing on many critical issues around membership and how to better serve our members.
I want to share with you some of the progress that we have been making within NZFFA.
At the recent Council meeting held at National Conference in Christchurch our executive member Jennie Marks ran a quick strategic review with the Councilors present. They had an opportunity to vote on a range of statements relating to how they viewed NZFFA. The results were emphatic with the following two statements getting large support:
“Supporting an organisation to influence how forestry and farming is done in New Zealand” and “Attending field days and seeing other people’s properties and forests”.
As a result of that, we are developing a refreshed strategy, which is with the Executive for review now and will be shared with all of you soon.
We have also pulled together a one-page pamphlet with information for new members. This explains who NZFFA is and has a QR code on it which should allow potential members to quickly and easily join NZFFA. This will be released before National Field days at Mystery Creek and hopefully will streamline the process of attracting new members and joining up.
We understand there has been frustration from some members around membership fees and other issues. This is not good from a membership organisation that must look after its members. I ask for your patience and pledge to continue to address these issues. While not making excuses, I will explain some of the reasons that these issues are happening.
In attempts to improve the service that members receive there have been several technology changes over time. This started a long time ago with the website. More recently the accounting package Xero was adopted. Quite recently there was a change to a membership system using Gecco. All of these have resulted in unintended consequences, some of which have disadvantaged some members. It has possibly been worse for NZFFA members given our demographic. Most of us do not adopt new technology readily so it can be a struggle, and I certainly fall into that category. We apologise for any issues, and I can assure you that we have been working hard to solve as many of them as we can.
The accounting package Xero has been worked on to sort out several glitches that have crept in over time. Some of these have created frustrating and embarrassing errors around membership payments and budget forecasts. We are relieved that these issues are being solved. Again, there will be communication coming to branch secretaries and treasurers soon about any changes.
In other news, the NZFFA website is having a complete makeover. This will be completed and available for use on June 30th, only about a month away! Again, I ask for your patience until then, but I am confident that all the work that Graham West put into driving this website improvement will be rewarded. When the refreshed website is operating, we will communicate some instructions to help all members get the best from it.
I am hopeful that the next time that I write for our newsletter I can talk about trees and not technology.
Regards,
Peter Davies-Colley
NZFFA – President
2025 Awards
Thanks to Stihl for their Sponsorship of the North and South Island Farm Foresters of the Year Awards. Click here to find out more about
Stihl North Island Farm Foresters of the Year Award presented by Mark Lochhead and Philip Ropiha to Stan and Jenny Braaksma.
Stihl South Island Farm Forester of the Year Award presented by Mark Lochhead and Philip Ropiha to Ian Jackson.
Stephen Brailsford with the Landcare Trust Award for Innovation in Sustainable Farm Forestry.
NZFFA on facebook