The Enduring Land - The Designers

You can put a fancy label on your cheese or milk powder, but in the end the product’s quality comes down to the animal and its state of health.

– Presenter Ruud Kleinpaste

Factory amalgamations hurt small towns, but the pressure of the international marketplace is irresistible. There isn’t room for small, less efficient factories if the dairy industry is to survive. What it requires are large flexible factories that can diversify their products at short notice as demands change.

– Presenter Ruud Kleinpaste on how refrigerated milk tankers affected milk factories

Most of New Zealand's sheep are descendants of animals introduced last century. Merinos were the first, and for a long time, the most popular variety in New Zealand. They were farmed for their wool, but the advent of refrigeration meant breeds that produced both wool and meat were more profitable.

– Presenter Ruud Kleinpaste on the decline of merino sheep numbers

Getting equipment from overseas proved difficult, so he invented as he went along, with pickle jars and tyre tubes.

– Presenter Ruud Kleinpaste on scientist Tom Blake's pioneering research into artificial insemination in farm animals

New Zealand leads the world in spray drying technology for milk powders, which are recombined into condensed milk, UHT milk and yoghurt, opening up export opportunities in Latin America and Asia.

– Presenter Ruud Kleinpaste

[John] Gilruth put his heart and sporran into the job, travelling the country to advise farmers how to control diseases in their animals. But he met with some opposition along the way. Once when Gilruth was holding forth about tuberculosis organisms, one farmer told him he didn't believe in anything he couldn't see. Gilruth looked at him for a moment and said "And tell me sir, can you see your own backside?"

– Presenter Ruud Kleinpaste recounts a conversation between Scottish veterinarian John A Gilruth and a dubious Kiwi farmer