Vodafone to support Young Farmers of today – the innovators of the future

Vodafone is passionate about working with emerging entrepreneurs – like New Zealand’s Young Farmers – and are excited to sponsor the Speeches Dinner at The 2012 Grand Final of The National Bank Young Farmer Contest to be held in Dunedin next week.

The Vodafone Speeches Dinner takes place on Thursday 24th May at Dunedin’s Edgar Centre.

The Speeches Dinner takes place after the mentally challenging Technical Day which is being held at the Invermay Research Centre. The seven Grand Final Contestants will be expected to present a speech on a topic given to them earlier in the day in front of a 300 strong audience.

Vodafone’s head of rural sales, Jeremy Anderson says, Vodafone is proud to be a part of The National Bank Young Farmer Contest this year. “We are a reasonably new player in this sector, but are delighted to support such talent and are looking forward to working with these young people who will define the industry in the years to come.”

“Our sponsorship of this function is just a small part of our strategy to deepen our understanding of agricultural businesses and deliver services that will make a difference beyond basic communication requirements.” 

Vodafone is delivering a rural broadband infrastructure offering fast connections to rural schools, hospitals and homes as part of the Government’s Rural Broadband Initiative.  New Zealand farmers are increasingly high-tech in their approach and need access to high-tech services: the Rural Broadband Initiative is intended to help maintain and extend that lead.  Food and agri-business products contribute two-thirds of New Zealand's export earnings, so the benefits of improving rural broadband are expected to be significant.

The initiative means farms will be able to showcase their products to markets, access support websites, do their banking online and get business critical updates.  They will be able to use the technology for environmental monitoring such as effluent and water control, managing stock in real time via cloud based applications as well as to access urban services such as shopping and watching YouTube videos.  Farms will have improved voice services too.