South island dairy giant remembered
Dr Terry Hughes will be remembered as a leading academic and farm consultant, supporting the South Island dairy sector at a pivotal time in its history. Words Dr Jim Gibbs.
It is with sadness that I report the recent death of Dr Terry Hughes, Lincoln, a giant of the New Zealand dairy industry, after a long and courageous battle with cancer.
Terence P Hughes was born (1950) and raised on the West Coast, where his academic abilities gained him a part scholarship to Massey University, and his rugby and strong back working farms paid the rest of his fees. A dairy man through and through, he was promptly gathered up for a Masters in calf feeding and then a PhD in pasture utilisation, under the late Professor Colin Holmes. Massey was a noted rugby team in the senior division across this period and Terry peaked there as a gifted flanker, playing representative rugby and displaying the character gifts that would later make him the celebrated academic and consultant so many students and farmers knew: his quiet determination and hard-headed perseverance, the insight that told him what was really going on, and his adaptability.
His years that followed saw him teaching at Lincoln University (then College) and had him almost single handedly running the nascent South Island dairy teaching and research. More importantly, he met and married his wonderful wife of 47 years, Miriam, and began their family, Rebecca, Tom and Aleksis. By the middle of this university period, he was a nationally prominent ruminant nutrition figure.
These were the glory days for Lincoln science, but looking in, they would seem tough years by any measure: he taught all the dairy science, taught more courses than any academic, managed the university dairy farm, and schooled the crop of postgraduates that had just begun to come through dairy science. But by his own account, he loved it all, and after almost twenty years there he had rockstar prominence across the South Island, just as the dairy boom was taking off in the 1990’s.
“Terry was prized by many of the industry’s leading farmers as a genuine grass-man, a man for every season.” – Dr Jim Gibbs, Canterbury
Very few academics make even competent farm consultants, but it is a mark of the man that Terry was able to step from academia and with no pause become a leading consultant in the dairy industry, staying at that until he stepped away. A founding member of FarmRight, he was involved with about 100 conversions when that really mattered and few had been done. Terry was prized by many of the industry’s leading farmers as a genuine grass-man, a man for every season. When it was all falling down, call Terry. In the years that followed, his unparalleled experience and skill set were requested by industry, academia and various governments across many initiatives and investigations.
Terry would often say it was nutrition research he missed outside academia, and from the early 2000’s to his premature death, he was an integral member of an unbroken sequence of two dozen Lincoln research student programmes and a dozen large projects. The list appears endless; from lameness, rumen function, fibre kinetics, methane, milk fat, minerals, calf rearing, to pasture, winter crops, plantain and urine production. I never found a livestock field he wasn’t across or didn’t thoroughly master. Truly, his bandwidth was enormous, and not likely to be repeated. It is humbling to read the many acknowledgements in PhD and Masters theses that paint his expertise, his generosity and his kindness.
I finish with a story that provides a succinct summary of the calibre of man he was. First game in rep rugby in his Massey period, at the first lineout, he was called and jumped for the ball. When he regained consciousness, he was on the ground with a split forehead, courtesy of an ugly elbow from his opposition. Taped up, he played on and the next lineout came. He was called again and jumped again. In surprise, he found himself both conscious and with the ball when he landed. His opposition, however, was knocked out cold, and Terry’s very senior prop walked to him and looked him in the face. He said simply, “I told myself he won’t jump again. But if he does, I’ll fight for him. And you jumped”.
That’s the Terry it was my great privilege to know. In a long career, every time he was needed, personal or professional, he jumped; no matter the circumstances or the cost. Vale Terry Hughes, vale. Truly, they don’t make them like you anymore.
