The Country 10/03/26: Rhys Roberts talks to Jamie Mackay

The chairman of the Impact Summit is also a 2022 Zanda McDonald Award winner and a Mid Canterbury dairy farmer (with a market garden) with Align Farms.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But I'm going to kick it off with the guy
who is the chair of the Impact Summit here. He's
also the twenty twenty two winner of the Xander McDonald Awards.
His name is Rhes Roberts, Mid Canterbury, Cowcocky, although you
do also run a market garden on your farm now,
Mid Canterbury. If you're a pastoral farmer, with all the

(00:20):
rain you've had, you must be having a ripper of
the season.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Thanks having me, Jamien, Yes, we are having an absolute belter,
to be honest with you, A dry land farm under
Mount Summers three hundred and ten mills since the first
of January. You know, it's a great place to be.
We've got good commodity prices, great productivity. So it's really
hard to find a complaint at the moment. If the
awards a complaint, it'd probably complacency or Trump.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
He needs to finish the war.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
He does need to finish the war. He's making signs
that he could finish the war.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well, he's making threats that he could finish the war.
I'm going to ask Connor English about this. There apparently
is a correlation between milk prices and oil prices. If
oil goes up, milk goes up, so you could be
even having a better season courtesy of Trump's megaler maniac tendencies.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
He's been helpful in the past and could be in
the future.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
How did you get the job of chair of the
Impact someone? Obviously you've got a connection with the awards
which are on tonight as a winner. I note the
bloke you pipped up the post, Old Adam Thompson. He
hasn't even made it here today yet.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, he's a bit of a lagger, Old Adam, But no,
I think it was just a process of last man standing. However,
been involved with someone, I like to give back. It's
been good to me and so I'd like to give back,
and that's how I've got involved. And it's been six
months of a teamwork to get to where we are
today and quite happy with what we've delivered. We've got
some great speakers ahead and we've had some great speakers

(01:41):
this morning, So I think there's Summit's more around connection
and bringing people together. So the speakers are kind of
a nice to have. It's around how do we enhance
and connect people and grow that network.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
There are some big players in that room. You can't
be a four hundred acre sheep farmer like I was
in Riversdale back in the day. I wouldn't have made
the cup for this thing. No.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
The speaker that I'm looking forward to, Don McDonald hundred.
He's been in business two hundred years tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Not family has m and Don is of course the
father of the late Sander McDonald, and they are They
were the Australia's biggest landowners, aren't they what they were?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah? Well privately So two hundred years family business next year.
That's phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Okay, Riece Roberts, I know you've you've come out of
because Don's speaking right now and you came out to
chat to me under duress. I'm going to let you
go and you can go back and well done. You've
got a great conference, very well organized.