For more than 40 years, Robin Campbell has served as a justice of the peace while at the same time offering his farming and governance skills to the wider Southland community and farming industry.
But for Mr Campbell, what he did started at home on his own small farm where he believed he had to maintain a highly productive farm where he practised what he preached to maintain his credibility.
He also believed nothing he did came without the support of his wife Lynley.
"If somebody accepted the responsibility that I had, then obviously there was somebody else at home doing some heavy lifting."
He was voted Agriculture Communicator of the Year in 2000.
As founding director and sometimes chairman of multiple agencies, including the New Zealand Sheep Council, Sheep Research Foundation, Sheep Improvement Ltd and Ovita, he promoted funding for pioneering farm genetics research and genomic technologies.
The research led to New Zealand lambs becoming heavier, ewes producing more lambs and increased
wool production.
Sheep numbers had declined, but they would always be part of the nation.
"Sheep remains really the only way that we can harvest the biomass of our harder country and convert that into food for people ... they control a whole lot of weeds, like wilding pines."
In addition to his rural interests his governance experience was also applied when he served as Presbyterian Support Southland chairman for nine years and as the PSS national chairman where he earned the Extra Mile Award for his contributions.
Other organisations to benefit from his governance skills include Venture Southland, Presbyterian Retirement Villages Ltd, Waituna Partners wetland restoration project, and the Community Trust of Southland.
