Change of focus for leading arable specialist

After 20 years in industry good research, one of the arable sector’s best known plant scientists is back in the field full time, and he’s loving it.

Richard Chynoweth.

Richard Chynoweth joined MRB in Ashburton as an independent agronomist/seed production specialist in July, having spent most of his career up until then with the Foundation for Arable Research.

The change means much less office and computer time, and much more time on farms across Canterbury helping individual growers maximise seed and grain production, while optimising their cost of production. There are still data to analyse and reports to write, but monitoring crops every week puts him back closer to his practical, outdoorsy rural roots, and the time was right for a change, he says: “It was now or never!”

Chynoweth joined FAR after three years working in high grade seed production at then-Wrightson Kimihia, and seed was at the heart of his extension and research at the Foundation from start to finish. His time there included undertaking both a Master’s and a PhD in perennial ryegrass seed production, and over two decades he tackled performance, production and agronomy challenges for virtually every major seed crop in the New Zealand arable sector, from white and red clover to beet to cocksfoot.

Raised on a farm near Ashburton that was predominantly in crop by the time he was in high school, Chynoweth says his interest in forging a career in the arable industry was sparked by agronomists visiting the property to advise on crop inputs and management. It only took six or eight months at Lincoln University as an agricultural science student to work out plant science was more interesting than animals, and he’s been studying plants in one sense or another ever since.

At the time he joined FAR, “we were more project managers than researchers, but that evolved a lot over the years as the wider research sector in NZ changed, and our work became increasingly driven by growers themselves telling us what they needed.”

Chynoweth joins six other independent farm advisers with a wide range of farm management expertise at MRB, including Jeremy Savage, Anton Nicholls, Mark Everest, Jamie Gordon, Trevor Gee and Sarah Hawkins.

He can be reached at 021 860 246.