The 23-year-old Gore rural banker is in a New Zealand team competing in the young breeders competition at the 2025 World Hereford Conference in Kansas City, Missouri in October.
The competition is held every four years.
Participating countries include Australia, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States.
Miss Barnett was in the team which won the competition held in conjunction with the World Hereford conference in Queenstown in 2020 which infamously linked to one of New Zealand's largest clusters of Covid-19.
The New Zealand team had a hometown advantage then, so while she is expecting it to be tough to retain the title this year, the team is up for it.
"The way [other countries] view stud breeding and the way they do showing is very different to New Zealand. We are definitely going to get among it and we are really looking forward to it," she said.
The value of comparing and contrasting farm systems was invaluable, she said..
Her team will be provided with broken-in Hereford cattle and will be judged on skills including stock presentation and handling.
"It is exciting," she said.
Miss Barnett is the only team member with any connection to the South; the four other members, including the non-travelling reserve, live in the North Island.
She will travel to the conference with her father Phil Barnett and will spend time in New York on the way.
Her father is a fourth-generation farmer and runs Hereford stud Kaitoa Polled Herefords on a sheep and beef farm near Dannevirke.
Miss Barnett established her own Hereford stud, Te Rangitūmau, on the family farm after buying 10 Hereford cows at a dispersal sale in Gisborne in 2014.
After finishing boarding school at Iona College in Havelock North, she studied a bachelor of agriculture degree at Lincoln University.
Her study included a semester abroad in Wageningen, in the central Netherlands, to learn about topics including animal health and welfare, farm management and genetics.
After graduating, she worked for ASB Bank in Northland and Waikato from 2023.
She began as a relationship manager at ASB Gore in February.
"I left the best until last, now I’m in Gore ... the farmers have been awesome and Southland is the land of opportunity," she said.
Hereford breeder Robert Kane, of Kane Farms , asked her to judge the West Otago A&P Society beef competition last month and she was impressed by the cattle studs in the south.
The short-to-medium term plan was to be a good banker and "do the best by farmers" and build her own equity so a long-term goal might be farm ownership.
No matter what, she would work in the rural sector. "I’m tied to the sector for life."
