Tim Wilson and Kate Hawkesby joined Mike Hosking to wrap the biggest news stories from the week. Mike's got an update on the coffee kiosk and what on earth happened to Tim Wilson?

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It's been about five years since Nadia Lim and Carlos Bagrie took over Royalburn Station, their endeavours growing the 485-hectare farm into the agricultural powerhouse it's become.

Founded in 1887, Royalburn Station has a lengthy history filled with grains; barley, wheat, sunflower seeds, peas, and clover seeds quickly becoming the backbone of Lim and Bagrie’s business.

When they bought Royalburn in 2019 neither of them had any experience with running a farm. Bagerie may have grown up on a southland sheep farm but he’s a marketer by trade, and while growing up in dense cities influenced Lim’s cooking, it left little space for farmwork.

Needless to say, it was a learning experience for both of them.

“What I’ve learned is that you’ve got to be someone that’s okay with not being in control, because things never, ever go your way,” Lim told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking.

“That’s probably one of the biggest skills you kind of need to have if you’re gonna go into farming.”

Royalburn Station sits on the Crown Terrace between Arrowtown and Wanaka, surrounded by mountains, a view Lim describes as ‘paradise’.

485-hectares is quite a significant amount of land but all of it is in use, Royalburn Station even having its own abattoir.

“You don’t need one,” Bagrie said. “But if you want the very best meat, you kind of want one.”

The pair’s vision for their farm is to create the most beautiful farm in the world, a quality that goes deeper than aesthetics as they aim to be a leader in regenerative, diverse, and ethical food production. ‘The very best’ in every area they produce.

“We actually won the New Zealand Food Producers Award last year for our lamb,” Lim revealed.

Moving down from Auckland, they weren’t met with the kindest reception, rumours and gossip going around calling them ‘pretend farmers’.

“But I think now people get it that actually, it is a proper working farm.”

Bagrie and Lim have diversified the farm quite significantly over the years, producing not only grains and lamb, but also honey, free range eggs, and produce from their organic market garden.

They’ve found success with their model but according to Bagrie, it’s not a model that would work for everyone, their location highly influencing their success.

“I think out model works because of, I mean, to be really frank, because of our ability to be able to supply those restaurants and have those direct relationships.”

Building an agricultural powerhouse is not an easy task, but they’ve now settled into something of a rhythm.

“We’ve been doing so many new things, this year is all just going to be about not doing anything new, just solidifying what we’ve got,” Lim told Hosking with a laugh.

Diversifying to the extent they have has a certain amount of risk, as if they’re not careful they can spread their production too thin.

“You’ll see when you watch the show, there is a lot of simplification happening.”

The show in question is the second season of Nadia’s Farm, the first episode having premiered last night. While reality TV tends to be dramatized for entertainment purposes, Lim said that this show is 100% real.

“I’ve done quite a bit of TV now and this show is like, unlike any other show I’ve ever done.”

“There’s no scripting, like no makeup, no team. We just go out there and film it,” Lim revealed.

“It’s as natural, and organic, and unpanned as it gets.”

Bagrie and Lim don’t want to shy away from the reality of farm life in this show, showing both the pleasantries and the nitty gritty.

“I feel like a lot of the problems we’ve run into now with how food gets to your plate, and a lot of, a lot of it has become taboo and people don’t want to talk about it or know about it.”

“The more you hide, the worse that knowledge gap becomes.”

‘Nadia’s Farm’ is out now on ThreeNow and Three.

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Paddy Gower has slammed “keyboard warriors” claiming the media is getting what it deserves for going “woke” amid mass job losses.

TV3 journalist and TV host Patrick Gower spoke to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking this morning following yesterday’s Newshub meeting where the closure of Newshub was confirmed.

Hosking asked Gower what he would say to those who say “you go woke, you go broke” and claim the media was bribed by the former Labour government.

“Get stuffed, and actually go away and, to use the term they use, do your own research,” Gower fired back.

Gower agreed the Public Interest Journalism fund had “branding issues” for media organisations because the public didn’t understand where the money was going.

“But at the end of the day, I’m not going to sit here and listen to sort of people like that say that kind of thing after I’ve slaved away my bloody life alongside my colleagues, 25 years in my case, putting damn good news out there.

“While we’ve got a trust problem, we need to address it and explain things that we’re doing properly.

“When it comes to the sort of Facebook keyboard warriors, I ain’t got no time for that, Mike.

“I’m about the 250 people who lost a job yesterday and actually the millions of other Kiwis that I know that trust me and trust my colleagues.”

Patrick Gower and colleagues on their way to learn Newshub's fate. Photo / Alex Burton

Gower told Hosking he didn’t know how many of the up to 300 people losing their jobs would remain in media.

“Who knows?

“I mean, even for myself, I’ve got no bloody idea what I’ll do next.”

Gower said he hoped a lot of his colleagues would remain in the field, but recognised it was a difficult time for the industry in New Zealand.

“It’s that simple, mate, not everybody can survive.

“But we’ve got to be optimistic, we can’t kind of give in.

“I can say for myself, I’m determined to get back out there.”

Hosking asked Gower how many of the employees likely saw the closure coming.

“It was always a possibility when we came in under the big company, particularly Warner Brothers Discovery when they’d merged ... some sort of shutdown was always possible.

“I’ve survived a couple myself in the last 14 years or we’ve been very, very close.

“So it was always on the cards.”

The state of the economy and the recession have had a huge impact on the media industry, Gower admitted.

“We often talk about the big structural problems that are behind all of this, but, hey, let’s face it, the economy has absolutely tanked, every single dollar virtually has dropped out of the advertising market.

“People are really struggling, [advertising] is the first thing that goes when a business is struggling, everybody knows that.

“That has just put insane pressure on all media companies.”

Gower said he hadn’t seen “anything” broadcasting minister Melissa Lee had done so far for the industry.

“I haven’t seen anything they’ve done, but at the same time, the media doesn’t need a bailout.

“So if anyone’s talking about some sort of cash bailout, we don’t need that.

“The media does need to be able to survive commercially. There are ways that we can do that.”

Gower said there are issues that both Governments, current and former, have not addressed that could have helped the media.

“There are massive structural problems out there that I just don’t think the Government’s got their head around.

“Paying these Kordia fees, television companies, paying fees to another government organisation for something that we don’t really need anymore is just plain nuts.

“It is crazy, that is literally jobs going out the door every time they pay those fees.”

Gower confirmed his show Paddy Gower Has Issues was not funded by NZ on Air, so wouldn’t be funded by TV3′s new model.

“There’s got to be other ways to do television programmes ... we’ve got to find commercially successful ways of doing this stuff. Stuff where things get paid for by viewers again. We’ve got to find a way back to that.”

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