Agricultural/​Horticultural Field Representative

My name is Jo Booth. I am an area manager and sales agronomist for Pioneer Brand Products and I cover the region of Wairarapa and Tararua.

A typical day really depends what time of the season it is. Right now, we’re coming to the end of May silage season so a typical day for me would be out on the road, on farm as well with merchant reps, contractors and the farmer. We’d be walking crops and looking at what stage they were at and how far away from harvest they might be. Other times of the year I’ll be on farm helping with farmers and their feeding, feeding maize silage to cows, and the rest of the time it could be staff training at merchant stores or just upskilling contractors.

I’ve grown up in the industry. My dad was an agricultural contractor before we went farming when I was about 10. We have a sheep and beef and a cropping block at home so I’ve grown up with crops and machinery all my life. So I’ve always been interested in how they all work as part of the agricultural industry.

I went to Lincoln University and did an ag-commerce degree for three years. I also did some travelling before I started my working life, driving tractors and combines over in Canada. I came home and decided that I’d love to be out on the road. I’d always thought that that would be a great job. You get to be on farm with the farmers but not actually have to own your farm which is good.

I got my first job after uni through a graduate programme with Elders New Zealand and they were really interested in me because I had been overseas and done some work and interacted with lots of different types of people. So they thought that was really beneficial for the type of role they were trying to create as a graduate agronomist.

The biggest challenge for me in this role is more around the seasonal challenges. Weather plays such a big part in what we do and the choices we make. Sometimes we have to be really quick thinking and change what we had originally planned to do. But that’s also part of the excitement. You have to be quick on your feet sometimes.

A big part of my job is customer relationship building so it doesn’t matter if you don’t come from a farming background or anything like that. As long as you are a really good relationship builder and have good levels of customer service, and are really friendly and approachable you can learn all about your products as part of your training.

How I see my role as being important on farm is that we’re like a partnership with the farmer. A farmer can’t be good at doing everything, so we can come with the knowledge or skills, depending on our product, and partner alongside them and help them get the best for their business.

We come with new ways of doing things quite often. Technology is always changing. Whether that’s a new type of chemical perhaps for their maize, or a new way of building a silage stack, or harvesting their crop at a different time. There’s always new technology and information coming to light that we try and bring to the farmer to help them make the best decisions.

To get your first job in the industry as a field rep I would do some research. Find what company you might like to work for or what products you might like to sell. Get in touch with your closest field rep – you’d probably be able to find most of them on the internet. Give them a call, ask if you can spend some time with them. Most of them would be more than happy to take you out for a day. And see how it feels and whether you think you’d like to do this.