Sugar Act
From the mid 1860s to 1882, he and his brother, Samuel, developed over at Tamahere, on former Ngāti Haua land. In 1882 he was secretary of Waikato Farmers' Cooperative and, from 1884, chairman of the North New Zealand Farmers' Co-operative Association, formed to establish a sugar beet industry. He influenced Julius Vogel to introduce the Beet-root Sugar Act 1884. The Coop was defunct by 1887.