Farming Legend of the Year announced

Prime Super is proud to support the Farming Legend of the Year award for 2017 – recognising someone who has made a significant contribution to Australian agriculture.

The Prime Super Farming Legend of the Year for 2017 is Dennis Howe, a 62 year old stalwart banana farmer from the Walkamin Tablelands in North Queensland.

Nominated by an employee and without his knowledge, Dennis is known for giving ‘anyone a go’ at a job; placing people where their skills are best suited.

Today, Dennis heads up Australia’s second largest banana farm and is one of the region’s biggest employers, with a staff of up to 500 during harvest.

However, he has diversified his crops over the years, beginning with peanut farming in the 1990s and now including Sheppard avocados, blueberries, sugarcane, coffee and other rotational crops as staples.

Described as forward thinking, Dennis is an engineer by trade who took up the family farm, then taught himself how use and program computers to create a farm management database. This led him to design a new type of machine for bagging bananas.

Dennis is well known in his community for donating time, money and fruit to local groups, churches, sporting clubs and causes.