2029 Horticulture - Conditions of Entry

Conditions of Entry

The competition is held on a national basis and up to three finalists will compete to determine the supreme winner of the Ahuwhenua Trophy Excellence in Māori Horticulture Award.

Entries are invited from levy paying members of Horticulture New Zealand who are actively engaged as growers of horticultural crops.

Entrants must be able to provide stand-alone accounts for their orchard or vegetable garden. This is to cover the situation where the entrant may run a number of associated activities, which may be amalgamated under an overall set of accounts. Entries of more than one property owned by an entity will be permitted provided the foregoing criteria are met. Allowance for this situation will be taken into account by the judges.

Benchmarking analysis will be undertaken to support this, all entrants must provide financial accounts for the business entered in the competition for each of the last three years along with supporting physical information (yield, fertiliser and water use, labour etc) for the same three-year period. Entrants will receive a Benchmarking Form upon entering for our analyst to gather the relevant information.

Entrants must:

• Complete the Entry Form.
• Complete the Benchmarking Form received when entering.
• Provide their last 3 years of financial accounts: 2025/2026, 2026/2027 and 2027/2028. If those for 2027/2028 are not available at the time of entry please advise when they will be provided, but meanwhile submit what is available.

All entrants will receive a copy of the financial and physical analysis. To the extent possible we will also provide benchmark information with other properties.

Please note: you will receive a Guide for Entrants with full details about the process upon entering.

Confidentiality

Entrants' names and all information supplied will be treated as confidential by the organisers and all those engaged in analysis and judging, and will not be passed on to any outside party.

Horticulture Competition

The Horticulture competition is held every third year alternating with Dairy and Sheep and Beef. Previous Ahuwhenua Trophy winners are required to stand down for the next succeeding competition. This applies to all farms owned by the winner.

The organisers reserve the right to alter the conditions of entry, judging arrangements and details of information for future competitions.