Stewardship Awards 2018 – English

18 April 2018

For immediate release

Press release issued by Dr Chris van Dijk, chief executive of the Milk Producers’ Organisation (MPO).

Nominate a dairy farmer for the 2018 stewardship awards

Following the successful launch of The Dairy Mail Stewardship Awards in 2017, The Dairy Mail invites interested persons to submit nominations for 2018.

In line with the strategic vision of the Milk Producers’ Organisation (MPO) – sustainable dairy farming for all – The Dairy Mail would like to join in recognising and rewarding good stewardship among South African dairy farmers. This is what prompted the magazine to initiate The Dairy Mail Stewardship Awards last year.

Stewardship may be defined in simple terms as the careful and responsible management of the resources entrusted to our care. So if anyone involved in the dairy industry know of a dairy farmer who is the epitome of a good steward of a dairy farm, nominate him or her for the second annual The Dairy Mail Stewardship Awards competition which identifies outstanding stewards.

This award recognises dairy farmers who excel in all three areas of stewardship: social and environmental stewardship as well as profitability. However, it can also help to determine where farmers stand at present in respect of certain stewardship indicators, such as water use, where there is room for improvement, and can indicate what needs to be done and how to measure progress. In this way we are enabling farmers to achieve sustained improvement, for their own benefit and the benefit of the dairy industry.

The farmers who are nominated must excel in at least one of the following areas:

• Is he or she a good steward of the land?
• Is he or she producing milk that is healthy, wholesome and safe to drink?
• Are the animals and humans on the farm well cared for and treated with consideration?
• Is the farmer running a profitable dairy enterprise?

 The Dairy Mail uses an adapted version of an American system in judging the stewardship awards. This system was developed in 2010 as the American dairy industry’s first attempt to measure their impact at the social and environmental levels as well as their profitability. The Dairy Mail has taken this system as the foundation and adapted it in order to measure stewardship reliably in the South African context. We call this the MPO 3P Metric, because the MPO’s strategic vision – sustainable dairy farming for everyone – is built on the “three P’s”: people, planet, and profitability.

The entry form is available on the MPO’s website, as well as on the Agri Connect website, which is also home to The Dairy Mail.

Farmers generally tend to avoid the limelight, so the entry form is structured in such a way that the farmer is nominated by someone else – possibly one of the farm managers or an input supplier who works on the farm, or even his milk purchaser.

Entries should be submitted by email before 30 May and judging will take place on the farms in the course of July and August. The winner will be announced at the national MPO gala dinner in September and introduced in the December issue of The Dairy Mail with a comprehensive article on his or her farming enterprise.

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For enquiries, phone Karen Grobler, the public relations manager, at 082 774 7008.