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The mention of a serial entrepreneur who founded a highly successful vodka brand could call to mind images of your typical city slicker
In 2026, the Johnstone family will be celebrating a major milestone, marking 100 years of family farming at ‘Puketutu’, their Te Kuiti property. Now a fourth-generation farmer, Allen Johnstone, who runs the 2,200-hectare sheep and beef farm with his wife Jo, is carrying on a family legacy that is centred on caring for the land, the animals and the people.
The Johnstones’ work around regeneration and biodiversity sawthem chosen as one of the first farms to be considered for Silver Fern Farms’ Net Carbon Zero pilot programme. Unlike other carbon offsetting programmes which purchase carbon credits from a third party, Silver Fern Farms’ approach is unique. It utilises ‘insetting’, whereby the carbon removals that are needed to balance out the product emissions are found on the farm where the animals are raised.