Kane turns succession challenge into award-winning plan

West Otago dairy farmer Luke Kane receives the 2026 Rabobank Dr John Morris Business Development Prize from Rabobank’s Elio Pegorer at the Executive Development Programme awards evening. Supplied.

West Otago dairy farmer Luke Kane has taken out a prestigious trans-Tasman farming award, winning the 2026 Rabobank Dr John Morris Business Development Prize.

The award is presented through Rabobank’s Executive Development Programme (EDP) and recognises an outstanding business development project focused on strategic growth, leadership and long-term sustainability.

Kane, who farms near Tapanui with his wife Nicole, said the win had come as a surprise.

“It’s pretty amazing,” he said. “I certainly didn’t see the award coming.”

A fourth-generation farmer, Kane is a director of two family farming companies, including Westholm Dairies Limited. The wider 668-hectare operation includes a 264-hectare dairy platform milking 700 crossbred cows, alongside beef finishing and stud cattle.

The EDP is run across two residential modules held about a year apart and is designed to strengthen farmers’ strategic planning, commercial management and leadership skills.

After the first module, participants develop a business project. Kane said projects were first submitted in no more than five pages, with nine participants selected to deliver a 15-minute presentation during the second module.

For Kane, the obvious subject was succession.

His family had already been working through the process for close to a decade, with what he described as “a couple of false starts, putting it politely”.

His goal after the first EDP module was to bring the family back together and establish a clearer plan for completing the process.

What surprised him was how quickly that plan began to move.

“We set some goals and, in hindsight, the timelines were far too long,” he said.

“That was probably what surprised us, how quickly it could actually be achieved.”

With lessons from the programme and support from key advisers, the family completed the process much sooner than Kane had expected.

“We bought the whole family out five weeks ago,” he said.

“We thought it was going to take another five to 10 years to settle everything up, so that was huge.”

One of the biggest lessons, Kane said, was that succession needed to start with people rather than numbers.

“You’re constantly trying to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes and ask, ‘What does this deal mean for me? What does it mean if I’m sitting in a different brother’s shoes? What does it mean for everybody?’”

Understanding everyone’s motivations had to come before determining whether an arrangement worked commercially.

“None of these succession arrangements work unless you’ve done that first,” he said.

“The finance piece is the last piece.”

Luke Kane on the family’s Tapanui farm with wife Nicole and daughter Poppy. Supplied.

Kane said he wished he had gained that perspective earlier.

“I’d love to have done this five or six years ago. We might be looking at a completely different family structure right now, but hindsight is hindsight.”

The programme also prompted Luke and Nicole to take a harder look at their wider business.

Before EDP, Kane said they felt things were “chugging along quite nicely”, but stepping away from day-to-day farming gave them the chance to identify what was working well and where improvements could be made.

With succession now completed, the business had greater clarity about its next steps, including possible equity partnerships, additional farm ownership and creating pathways for staff.

“It allows us to keep ticking off those long-term goals and really push the business a bit harder now.”

EDP also helped give Luke and Nicole the confidence to enter the 2026 Otago Ballance Farm Environment Awards, which recognise environmental, economic and social performance in farming. They went on to win the Otago Supreme Award.

Kane said feedback from that judging process also fed into his EDP project.

He valued being exposed to ideas outside dairy farming, particularly as there were only two dairy farmers in the second module.

“There were so many systems and procedures I could pick up from people involved in completely different types of farming and adapt to our own business,” he said.

“It’s just a different way of thinking.”

For other farming families facing succession, Kane’s advice is to step away from the day-to-day business and take an honest look at the bigger picture.

“I’d say doing this is a bit like doing a stocktake,” he said.

“You don’t know what you have, or what you don’t have, until you really delve into it and take the time to step out of the day-to-day running of the business and identify those key strengths and weaknesses.”

And while succession can feel daunting, Kane said the process had also opened his eyes to what could be possible.

“It’s probably not scary doing it. What’s scary is learning where your business could actually be in 10 years.

“When you look at some of the potential for compounding growth now, you think, ‘Holy, this is hard to fathom.’”