GEOFF Ruchs has had a good view of the entire agricultural industry across his career, taking in broadacre cropping, horticulture, machinery upgrades and livestock.
He started out working at his family’s dairy farm at Salisbury, before taking on a wide-ranging employment path that took him interstate and overseas, before he settled at Geranium in the Mallee.
After finishing school, Geoff began working in the parts department at major machinery brand Chamberlain’s outlet at Pooraka.
He expressed an interest in sales and before long was progressing through the ranks as a sales cadet, then sales representative and territory sales manager.
At the same time, Chamberlain had been incorporated into the John Deere brand, leading to Geoff eventually become the SA state sales manager for John Deere.
“When I first went on the road we’d have to see so many farmers in a day and we’d go on-farm to all parts of SA and talk to farmers about their machinery,” he said.
“We used to go to the (Royal Adelaide Show) and take tractors and people would make a beeline to us and say how their machinery was working out. I still go to clearing sales and old customers come up and reminisce about the old days.”
Geoff was able to travel to the United States for the reveal of the 40 series John Deere and see how dealerships operate in that country – “very different to here”.
On his return, he was offered the role of John Deere state sales manager for WA and NT, so he and wife Nola and their three children moved west to Perth.
There he got to work getting an idea about the huge range of climate variations and farming and horticulture sectors in such a vast area.
In 1981, they decided it was time to come back home, returning to a property at Geranium they had bought a few years earlier that was being managed by his father.
“I had a bug to go farming,” he said.
“When we went on the farm, I really liked machinery and thought we’d be working with machinery but I developed a love of livestock. Sheep do really well in that country.”
Greg and Nola still did some cropping and hay production but found most of the focus was on Merinos for export lambs and wool.
While at Geranium, Geoff began a new career, starting work at Farmtec, which in turn became IAMA, then Landmark.
“(Former owner) Brenton Lewis asked me to help out one summer and basically 17 years later I left there,” he said.
Machinery still played a part, with a Goldacres sprayer franchise, but his main focus switched to merchandise and animal health.
In recent years, Geoff and Nola decided it was time to wind down, and they have sold the Mallee farm and moved back to their roots at Hewett, near Gawler, in the region they grew up.
“It feels like coming home,” Geoff said.
The move has bought them closer to daughter Jodie, who works at an Adelaide Plains school, while their two sons have both gone into agriculture, Paul working at Landmark Keith and Craig as GRDC southern grower services manager.