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The carved waharoa at the Aho Farms entrance in black and white — whakairo along its bargeboards, a tekoteko at the post, framed by trees and the palisade fence
Ō MĀTOU TAKENGA · OUR ORIGIN

Our Origin.A return to whenua.

The story of why Aho exists.

A RETURN TO WHENUA

A return to whenua.

For more than five generations, the Ellison whānau have been fortunate to retain part of our tūrangawaewae, whenua that our tīpuna walked, worked and cared for before us.

But retaining whenua and being able to live from it are two different things.

Like many Māori whānau, urbanisation changed our relationship with the land.

Generations moved away from home and into larger towns and cities in search of mahi (work), education and opportunity. With fewer whānau remaining on the whenua, parts of the land entered long-term agricultural leases, some extending for more than 20 years.

The whenua remained.

But over time, much of the knowledge and experience of commercially working that whenua within our whānau was lost.

And with each generation away from home, the connection between whānau and whenua became harder to maintain.

Carved tekoteko standing in the shelter of the waharoa, in black and white, eyes catching the light
The whenua remained · a guardian at the gateway

Yet the desire to return never disappeared.

Aho began with a question

How do we create a commercially viable reason for our whānau to return to the whenua?

The answer couldn't simply be come home.

There needed to be meaningful mahi. There needed to be opportunity. And whatever we built needed to generate enough value from the whenua to sustain the people returning to it.

Because returning to whenua cannot survive on sentiment alone.

Our whenua, from above · tūrangawaewae
Medicinal cannabis growing outdoors on a small cultivation footprint at Aho Farms
A small footprint on the whenua

Medicinal cannabis offered a different possibility.

The challenge was finding an industry that could create meaningful economic value without requiring hundreds of hectares of land or displacing the agricultural activity already supporting the whenua.

High-value cultivation could begin on a relatively small footprint.

It meant we could establish cultivation on previously underutilised areas, prove commercial viability and create employment while allowing the majority of the whenua to continue under its existing agricultural leases.

We didn't have to choose between what the whenua was already providing and what it could become.

We could start small. We could learn. We could prove the model. And we could return.

It has to be viable. That became one of the foundations of Aho.

Aho Farms founder smiling, standing by a lake with hills behind
THE JOURNEY BEFORE AHO

But the journey to Aho began much earlier.

Years before Aho Farms existed, our founder travelled to the United States to attend college and play American football.

Our founder

Five steps on the way to Aho

Timeline of the journey before Aho: American football, the injury, medicine, California, seven years — five knots along a single cord above the Hawke's Bay hills

  1. American football

    College in the United States, and the game that took him there.

  2. The injury

    Three years into that journey, a serious shoulder-blade injury changed his relationship with cannabis.

    What he had previously understood primarily as a recreational plant became something very different.

  3. Medicine

    During his recovery, he was exposed to cannabis being used in different forms, including edibles, salves and tinctures, and began to understand the plant through another lens.

  4. California

    That belief eventually took him into California's cannabis industry.

    What followed was years of learning: cultivation, processing, genetics, commercial production and the systems required to take a plant from propagation through to a finished product.

  5. Seven years

    It wasn't yet Aho. But the knowledge that would eventually make Aho possible was being built.

    Nearly seven years later, that knowledge came home to Aotearoa.

If this plant could help people, Māori should have access to it too.

A cannabis leaf casting its shadow across a pale wall beside carved whakairo

A desire to return to whenua.

And the knowledge of an industry capable of making that return commercially possible.

Aho was born.

FROM ONE WHĀNAU TO SOMETHING BIGGER

What began as a whānau solution became something bigger.

How can the Ellison whānau create a viable pathway back to our tūrangawaewae?

Initially, the problem we were trying to solve was our own.

But as Aho developed, we began to understand that our story wasn't unique.

Urbanisation reshaped Māori communities throughout Aotearoa.

Whānau moved toward towns and cities for employment, education and opportunity. In many cases, generations grew increasingly distant from the whenua their tīpuna had lived and worked upon.

Yet for many, something remained.

The whenua remained. The whakapapa remained. The desire to return remained.
The Aho Farms site from the air — greenhouses, the cleared expansion and the bush-covered hills
The whenua remained

What was often missing was the economic pathway that made returning realistic.

That realisation changed the ambition of Aho.

What started as a vehicle to solve an Ellison whānau problem became something much bigger.

FROM A COMPANY TO A MODEL

Our ambition is not simply to become a medicinal cannabis company that happens to grow on Māori land.

We want to prove a model for what Māori land can make possible.

A model where high-value cultivation can create meaningful economic output from relatively small areas of whenua.

Where new enterprise can coexist alongside existing land uses rather than necessarily replacing them.

Where international knowledge can be brought home and transferred to local people.

Where employment can create a reason for whānau to return.

And where commercial success becomes the mechanism through which connection to whenua can be strengthened again.

If we can prove that model on our own whenua, our hope is that one day it can extend beyond it.

TE AHO · THE THREAD OF AHO

That is the thread of Aho.

Aho means thread, line or connection.

For us, that thread reaches backwards. It runs through the generations, across the Pacific, and back home. Today, we are adding another strand. And our responsibility is to make sure the thread continues forward.

  1. To the tīpuna who walked and worked this whenua.
  2. Through the generations who left home searching for opportunity.
  3. Across the Pacific to California, where knowledge of the plant was gained.
  4. And back home to Aotearoa, where that knowledge could finally be put to work on our own whenua.
  5. Today, we are adding another strand.Aho Farms · Hawke's Bay
  6. To our tamariki.
  7. To our mokopuna.
  8. And, we hope, eventually to other whānau searching for their own pathway home.