The light-heartened challenge gets teams to do a series of agriculture-related tasks such as erect a farm gate as quickly as possible but the NAB team came a cropper with its take on the task that required all team members to get in a farm commodity bulker bag and go through a farm gate.

While other teams took the traditional and difficult approach of all four members getting in the bag and hopping through the farm gate, the NAB team put the bag over their heads and ran.

Organisers gave the NAB members credit for “using their heads” but disqualified them for not following the rules, a decision accepted with good humour by the NAB team.

The winners were a team from Rural Industries Skills Training (RIST) in Hamilton, that took the hard road in the bulker bag and hopped to it.

Team members Tyson Hutchison, Rebecca Brown, Chris McDonald and Andrew Brown were all from dairy farms and had plenty of experience in many of the tasks such as erecting a temporary strip fence, putting together poly pipe fittings that downsize from two inch to one inch parts and switching the tyres on a quad bike.

All four team members are doing agriculture studies at RIST and where courses such as water, all terrain vehicles and fencing had helped them hone their skills.

They had no rehearsal for the task series but it appeared so had none of their rivals.

RIST teams are regular entrants in the annual challenge.

This year’s winning RIST team progresses on to compete in a farmer challenge at the Royal Melbourne Show in September.

The RIST team’s time of eight minutes 25 seconds to complete the tasks was nearly a minute head of second place getter, Emmanuel College’s “Busy” team. Emmanuel College had two teams in the challenge with twins Luke and Michael McCosh doubling up not only in life but also in the other team.

The event is run by the Western District Young farmers and WestVic Dairy’s Young Dairy Network.