Julia Baynes is a self-confessed townie whose career in the agricultural and veterinary sphere has made her acutely aware of the unique value women bring to the sector. Viv Posselt explains.
Speaker Julia Baynes, flanked at the Cambridge talk by incoming Women in Agribusiness NZ regional lead, Te Awamutu-based Grace Moscrip, left, and outgoing regional lead Maddie Drew. Photo: Viv Posselt
The day after the world marked International Women’s Day 2026, one of New Zealand’s own – a woman with untethered mettle – championed what women bring to the agricultural sector.
Julia Baynes was guest speaker at last month’s Waikato Dinner Club event in Cambridge, organised and hosted by Women in Agribusiness NZ. The soiree, held on the heels of International Women’s Day 2026 with the UN-mandated theme ‘Rights, Justice, Action for all Women and Girls’, was well-timed for her message.
She’s a townie who has embedded herself in the country, a musician cum veterinarian, someone whose life as an international advertising executive saw her work overseas and alongside the team who produced the wholly Kiwi Toyota ‘Bugger’ television commercial of a few years back.
She was at her first job at Saatchi & Saatchi at the time and quickly found herself embroiled in the complaints that ad sparked.
How Baynes polished each of her multiple facets speaks to her grit. She’s a Wellington native, ‘a city girl’ whose mum wanted her to go to medical school and dad thought she’d be a good lawyer because she could argue up a storm. Instead, and she thinks to their disappointment, she took to music.
“The joke might be on them, though,” she said. “I’m playing a wedding in Whanganui with my band this weekend and going to make a shit load of money doing it!”
When people she knew in the advertising game were looking for someone to write music, she fell into the industry, complete with jingle-writing requirements, long days and relocation to Europe. She lived there for eight years, honing her business and marketing skills, yet craving something different.
“I was always fascinated by farmers who successfully raised stock and ran their business at the same time … who dealt with life and death, the vagaries of the weather and still managed the books,” she said. “I wondered if I could turn that into something that brought me back to New Zealand.”
That something saw her back here and retraining as a vet at age 28. “I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a move from London to Palmerston North …”
Her younger fellow students left her wanting in the physics department, and lecturers who suggested townies were unfit to be on-farm vets were just some of what needled her.
“People would ask where my farm was. I stopped telling them I was from Wellington and just said it was ‘south of the Manawatu’,” she said. “But I had no real idea what I was doing; I was playing catch-up. In the end, you just try not to be a dick on farm … like leaving stock gates open and such like.”
A thrilling confidence boost came in year four, when an established farm worker said he would never have known she wasn’t a farm girl.
Dairying, and in particular dairy genetics, turned out to be Baynes’ passion. As a new grad vet in the Waikato, she learned that she knew the equivalent of nothing and is grateful to farmers who took the time to steer her through those early days.
After several years working for Anexa Vets in Waikato, she suggested to her husband that she apply for a role as national sales manager for CRV. He said why not? “After all,” he said, “why shouldn’t a vet muso with marketing experience throw their hat in the ring?”
She was the first woman in the role, loved standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the farmers, supporting and learning at the same time. “It’s all about understanding their problems and offering solutions. We do the same thing as vets.”
Baynes believes women bring something different to the wider sector, an emotional intelligence, a more intuitive awareness. They also bring a unique sense of humour, she suggests, recalling the all-female team brightening work around bulls’ fertility with ‘dick pic Fridays’.
Last October she started her own gig, working out of her property in Matamata. Her Cow Academy is in its early stages, focusing initially on training programmes for agri-businesses.
The two-pronged focus of Cow Academy is to build training programmes for those in the sector, and to recognise the value of foreign nationals working on Kiwi farms, in particular those struggling with language barriers while going through existing training programmes.
“There is an opportunity to upskill a whole new group of farm workers who are passionate about what they do,” she said.
“So many people have done so much for me … it is time to pay it forward.”
Julia Baynes – veterinarian, muso, marketer and former advertising executive – spoke to a group of agribusiness-focused Waikato women.
