From southern farmer to Featherston Street

One senses Conor English is not the sentimental sort. And yet he confesses to "just about crying" the day he sold a John Deere 1075 Hydro 4 header.

No coincidence, then, that the outgoing Federated Farmers chief executive has a desk littered with models of Massey Ferguson and JD farm machinery.

And although it is about 20 years since he worked fulltime on a farm, he can still wax lyrical over a Massey 188 or a JD 44-40 cropping tractor. Today's machines, however, are "like 747s" compared to the tractors of yesteryear.

So English knows his way around a farm. Until he arrived in Wellington in the early 1990s, he was in a partnership in Dipton, Southland, near the family farm.

"When I was 18 we bought a 121-hectare block with sheep, cattle, cropping, forestry and a few deer. Over the next few years we built it up to 688ha and were running 7000 stock units," he says.

Read more of this article on stuff.co.nz