At The Regions, our holistic approach to recruitment and immigration is unique. What makes us different? We believe it’s the ongoing support and pastoral care we provide to our clients, both migrant farmworkers and dairy farmers.
Our team don’t just match the right farmworker with the right dairy farmer – although we do that too! We want to make sure the whole community benefits from our agricultural employment solutions, which is why we have key account managers placed in each of the regions we operate, to provide the ongoing support to both employer and employee.
Every one of our migrant farmworkers who has made the decision to move to New Zealand is doing so for a better future, a better life for them and their family, for better opportunities. Not only do they benefit from their new life in New Zealand, so too do the rural communities in which they are placed. And nowhere is that more evident than in Southland.
Supporting the South
Southland is experiencing huge growth and industry opportunity far outweighs the current population. The Southland Regional Development Strategy, Te Iwi Me Oranga Rauemi (SORDS) is actively encouraging more people to move south and enjoy the many social and economic benefits of a lifestyle in Southland.
The opportunity to help the Southland community grow is something we are passionate about and it fits with our company values to support, adapt and grow. That is why we have launched our own initiative, the Community 500 Initiative.
Community 500 initiative
Drawing on the vision put forward by SORDS, our team have committed to placing 500 new migrant farmworkers and their families into the Southland community by Christmas 2025. The Southland dairy farming sector is facing a severe labour shortage, much like the rest of New Zealand, but we can find committed, reliable and hardworking farmworkers who are eager to establish a better life in Southland.
To date, we have placed over 50 workers in roles within small, large and corporate dairy farm operations in the South Island, and we have supported them through this placement. This ongoing support we provide helps migrant farmworkers to establish themselves in both their roles and their communities faster, enabling them to feel settled in a shorter space of time.
Pastoral care and support
For our team, recruiting farmworkers and helping them through the immigration process is just the beginning of our role. To achieve a better New Zealand we have identified the need to provide ongoing pastoral care and support to our farmworkers and the dairy farmers who employ them.
Our Southland Community 500 initiative is an exciting initiative to be involved in. There is a large Filipino community already established in Southland (the majority of our farmworkers come from the Philippines) which lays the foundations for a very successful project that will contribute to our overall goal of a better New Zealand.
We are looking forward to working with SORDS and the Southland dairy farming community to achieve our target of placing 500 new members into Southland’s region of opportunity.
Our stand against the stand down
Of course we can’t achieve this if Immigration New Zealand continues to put barriers up that prevent reliable, hardworking and committed migrant farmworkers from working in New Zealand’s dairy farming sector.
The proposed stand down of low skilled migrant farmworkers after three years on a one year working visa will have crippling effects in communities such as Southland. And that is why we are taking a stand.
We are standing up against the stand down for communities such as Southland where migrant farmworkers can make such a valuable contribution to the local economy and contribute to the betterment of New Zealand.
