2026 Ahuwhenua Trophy Horticulture Competition - Conditions of Entry

Conditions of Entry

The Ahuwhenua Trophy for Excellence in Māori Horticulture recognises and celebrates Māori who work with the sun, soil and water to grow kai.

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 Application Form upon entering for our analyst to gather the relevant information.

The competition will be 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 2023. Previous Ahuwhenua Trophy winners are required to stand down for the next succeeding competition. This applies to all orchards or vegetable gardens owned by the winner.

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

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.

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.