Dean Gazzola is nominated for Young Grower of the Year award

Dean Gazzola of Gazzola Farms on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula is one of 12 nominees for the 2025 Corteva Agriscience Young Grower of the Year award.

A fourth-generation vegetable farmer on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula is being recognised for his work on genetics and biomes, exactly a century after his family first started farming in Australia.

Dean Gazzola of Gazzola Farms at Boneo and Somerville, where his father and two uncles are directors, is one of 12 nominees for the 2025 Corteva Agriscience Young Grower of the Year award.

Dean Gazzola. Picture: Supplied

Dean isn’t afraid of trial and error in the bid to improve productivity gains at the farm, and has spent the past year doing more trials than ever in the genetics space.

“We’re pushing different varieties to their limits in terms of their planting period. Bringing them forward, pushing them back, and really testing what they can do and what they’re like … I’ve had a really thorough planting regime,” he said.

He’s also been doing trials on lettuce with soil treatment product Digestor NP from Metagen, and seen improvements in the microbiome and soil health, resulting in a better quality product overall.

“It’s still early days, but my hope is the continual use of that will mean we won’t have to be so reliant on other products that will need to be added to the ground,” he said.

While farming is in his blood, Dean previously took a career break and joined the Australian navy for five years.

Working as a maritime logistics officer, he said his experience was invaluable on his return to the family farm.

“Because the military is such a high pressure and high stress environment at times, you’re really trained to deal with a lot of conflicting things at once,” he said.

“I think being trained at that level means that since I’ve come back to the farm, I’ve been pretty good at managing all sorts of things under pressure and stress.”