The retired Marlborough farmer has gained a profile for helping farmers get through tough times and build resilience by highlighting his own climb out of depression.
Smashed by eight years of droughts, he changed direction in his life and farming, crediting lucerne for building resilience in the family farm Bonavaree in Marlborough.
Mr Avery revealed another book is on the way as a guest speaker at the New Zealand Grain and Seed Trade Association’s conference at Te Pae Conference Centre in Christchurch.
He said the Focus on the Future theme of the conference was appropriate for him as looking ahead helped him set a strategy of purpose and hope.
The light came on 22 years ago when he realised he wanted a memorable and forward-looking life, he said.
"I want to be involved in making people future-ready. You see the man that stands in front of you suffered five years of depression and some people didn’t have the ability to get through but I did and that’s been part of my mission ever since to support people what I call the lighthouse effect. It’s the way forward, looking to the future and turning the light on."
His first book struck a chord with readers, selling about 30,000 copies worldwide.
The backbone of the next one will focus on the wellness pillars of love, connection, purpose and hope.
"Every human being I nearly know can take out one of those things, but if you take two out you’re in big trouble and I constantly work with people in big trouble."
In his early life he never realised he had yet-to-be-developed talents because he was so involved in hard, grinding work.
Many farming people are still in this place, he said.
When he had them sit on his couch asking for help they focused on their current story on what was going wrong or dwelled on the past and it was only when he asked their future story that they pulled themselves up.
He said that applied to "broken people" as well as well people as thinking about where the future would take them was a great step forward in their life.
"I’m 67 years old and I absolutely delight in the thought that I had five years of depression because at least it woke me up. It gave me a second chance. I missed death by a thread, but the last 22 years of my life have been absolutely outstanding and I love working with depressed people because I know they are like me that they’ve got talents, but like minerals in the earth often talents are deeply buried."
He credits family and surrounding himself with capable people and a team of mentors for helping him get through the dark times.
After years of being bogged down by drought he turned Bonavaree around after attending a presentation by Lincoln University professor Dr Derrick Moot on using lucerne as stock feed. That led him to thinking about using water more efficiently, working with better plants and sequestering carbon into the soil,
Mr Avery said he became known as the "lucerne loosehead", but now the farm was an environmental exemplar.
"Most of my farming career I went everywhere in New Zealand with pasture envy. Now I go nowhere as we have some of the best pastures in the country. Dr Derrick Moot has been on speed dial with me for 20 years and he recently told me that we are the lowest emission-intensity meat production system on the globe."
Farmers kept warning him that he was heading for a breakdown buying up neighbouring properties to grow the farm from 260ha to 2500ha last year.
While he pushed himself too hard at times, he remains grateful that it helped him manage his own head as a permanent growth path was key to his wellbeing.
Continuous change was in "his DNA" now and it should be embraced rather than people fearmongering about the future. Allowing himself to be disrupted worked for him as the status quo didn’t stack up in a changing world, he said.
Mr Avery said he was grateful that the next generation of Averys was carrying on the farming development of Bonavaree after smooth succession planning.
TIM.CRONSHAW@alliedpress.co.nz
