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Emma Crutchley. Finding the sheep and beef value-add.

Emma Crutchley, 2018 Kellogg Scholar, talks to Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly managing editor about some of the challenges sheep and beef farming faces in a water-short region.

Emma discusses her Kellogg research, the Value Chain Innovation Programme, and the work being done on ‘Puketoi’ to find value-add.

Listen to Emma’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

Kia Ora, you’ve joined the Ideas That Grow podcast, brought to you by Rural Leaders. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant ideas that grow so our regions can flourish. Ideas that Grow is presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week, we are talking to Otago sheep and beef farmer, Emma Crutchley.

Bryan Gibson:
G’day, Emma. How’s it going?

Emma Crutchley, 2018 Kellogg Scholar, sheep, beef and arable farmer.
Good, thank you Bryan. How are you?

BG: Yeah, I’m really good. Yeah, so whereabouts in Otago are you?

EC: My husband, and I and two children live in a little inland basin called the Maniototo in Central Otago on a sheep, beef, and arable farm here called Puketoi.

BG: Sounds like a lot of work.

Maniototo sheep, beef and arable farming.

EC: Yep. So, I grew up here. My grandfather bought the farm in 1939, and we go a couple of more generations back here in the Maniototo. He’s one of the youngest sons, and he moved over from Kyeburn to Puketoi then.

I am an ’80s child, so I remember little bits of farming growing up through there. And I’m the youngest daughter out of…I’ve got an older brother. When I was younger, I had a love for animals and the farm and I could literally be found in any lamb pen, in any dog kennel, any filthy, smelly, or challenging job.

Growing up, I would be neck-deep in it. Mum and dad never really had a chance to get me out of it, and not that they ever thought that was a thing. They were very supportive of all their children, regardless of gender, being involved in the farm. I guess growing up here, I went away to boarding school and continued my love for the farm straight to Lincoln, and I never really looked anywhere else. From there, I moved on to work as a rural professional, as an agronomist, working in Christchurch for PGG Wrightson, and then later working for Pamu out of Wellington.

I knew I’d return home to the farm, but I was always a little bit hesitant because I love being around people and I love my networks and the social life side of it. I knew if I moved home, I was moving to a relatively isolated place away from a lot of the people that I really enjoyed being around.

I knew that it was the best opportunity I had and always something I really wanted to do. So I moved home in 2009, and imported a husband to the Maniototo, because it won’t come as a surprise, but being a small, rural community, everyone’s relatively related. I knew I had to find a husband before I moved home. So, yeah, he came home, and he moved here in 2010. And yeah, so we’ve worked to take over the family farm from my parents.

We’ve got just under 500 hectares of irrigation. The rainfall here is often what ‘wows’ people, it’s a 350ml rainfall. So irrigation creates the resilience we need to do what we do. We’re arable, so we grow about 100 hectares of arable crops: wheat, barley, peas, linseed, clover, rye for seed, and a few other bits-and-bobs as they come along.

We’ve got an angus stud as well. So we sell about 25 stud bulls each year. The main thing we do here, that is our main point of production, is our lambs. We have about six and a half thousand ewes. And apart from replacements, we finish all lambs born on the farm and also purchase more store lambs in January and carry them through as well to meet the demands of what we can produce and who we supply.

I do a lot in the advocacy space with Federated Farmers in Otago and also as a director for Irrigation New Zealand. My husband is very involved and he leads a lot of the rural fire stuff in this area. Being in a dry climate, it’s one of our challenges, I suppose.

BG: That sounds like a massive and diverse life you’ve got.

EC: Yeah, there’s a wee bit going on. They’ve got two kids of the mix, two, eight, and 10, so they keep us on our toes.

BG: Now, you mentioned the engagement with the Rural Leaders Programme was a Kellogg report, I think it was in 2018, that was on how to manage water efficiently and what that might mean. I guess it’s an issue that’s close to your home – and your heart. That’s why you took it on?

Kellogg research into water sharing in a water-short catchment.

EC: Well, as you know in 2017, one of the top election issues was around freshwater and how it’s managed in New Zealand. There was a lot of pressure around irrigation and the association with water quality and quantity. At that time, I was a director on our local irrigation company.

Being in this extreme climate where we are short growing season – long winters, and the value that irrigation is to our business in terms of the resilience and our adaption to climate change, I knew when I applied for the Kellogg Programme, exactly what I wanted to study in terms of a research project.

I’d been looking at it for a while, because the kids were, at the time, I think they were two and four, and at that time they’re starting to get a little bit more…I don’t know…I just went and did it!

So, my project was on water sharing in a water-short catchment, which was basically focusing in around, freshwater governance, or even crossing into environmental governance. I looked at different models from around the world and different examples of how water was managed, ownership rights, community management, and then investigated some of the policy settings we have. Also some of the solutions that might work in that space.

I think one of the learnings I got out of that was, as farmers in New Zealand we’re incredibly individualistic in how we run our businesses and that is a reflection of the challenges. The challenges we faced in the ’80s, we found ourselves then in that time of high interest rates and challenging Rogernomics type stuff. As individual farmers we had to farm our way out of it. We did that really, really well. But then that’s led us to being really innovative.

We need to understand the ‘why’ as to why the change is happening. I’m probably going a little bit off track here, but that project set the scene for me, for doing a lot of work over the last six years in the advocacy space and advocating for not only enabling farmers room to understand the ‘why’, but also those connections with stakeholders and the importance of that.

At the end of the day, the government calls the shots on policy, but the people that are voting for the government are our stakeholders, our New Zealand public, and the importance of understanding that dynamic for long-term goals rather than focusing on short-term advocacy outcomes.

BG: Yeah, I know you’ve done a lot of work. We had some stories in the newspaper this year on some of the work you’ve done to advocate for some changes to some of the water plans down your way?

Farming and the environment.

EC: I guess the thing that in Otago, we’ve worked first off the bat with land and water plans and regional policy statement, and I guess we’re also one of the most diverse regions in a Otago. For me, or for everyone really, farming systems in New Zealand are heavily intertwined with the environment. There’s always going to be public interest in farming because of our association with the environment that we farm in.

Everyone’s always looking over our fence. From that, it’s like, how do we set it up, so we enable farmers who are very good at change. So for that example, multiple challenges can be solved with one solution, and one challenge can be solved with multiple solutions. And what I mean by that is, how do you enable policy settings that enable this diverse, incredibly stunning region to actually find the scope within those policy settings to innovate around the challenge and to solve the different water quality, biodiversity, climate change challenges that we have faced.

I think advocacy is probably…I think it’s changing. We need to start learning. But it’s like communicating in a way which enables you to be understood. And my thoughts around that is we had in the Upper Taieri, one of our biggest challenges was the Upper Taieri plain and the diverse hydrology landscape that was tied up in the national wetland regulations. Then what that was the unintended consequence that that was going to create.

So, we had our big jobs for a nature project set up at that time, which involved the relationships with multiple stakeholders. I guess we always knew that if we were going to be successful in changing the settings around the wetland regulations that we needed to have a common ground with our stakeholders and what we were trying to achieve.

I know there’s a lot of narrative around, for example, the stock exclusion regulations and the huge cost they create on farmers. If you can flip that into, we need the tools in the toolbox to manage our environment, in a way that is best for the environment and best for our rural communities. We need to recognise the role that livestock can play within those systems to control our weeds and help with pest control. That was a common ground that we found.

So when we went to MFE with that case to Minister Parker, it was probably a more resonating message than just saying, ‘Oh, it’s a huge cost of fencing, and we’re going to lose all this land that we can graze’, which doesn’t resonate with everyone. They actually don’t care. They just want fresh water and they want a pristine environment. It’s explaining it in a way that actually identifies the unintended consequence of that.

So off the back of that, we managed to get that cut out of the stock exclusion rules, but it’s still a work in progress. We’ve still got to continue that conversation with our regional council as part of our water plan.

The art of making the tough conversations easier.

BG: Sounds like you’re at the forefront of a type of evolution that’s been talked quite a lot in terms of managing our natural assets – has many stakeholders who mostly want to do the same thing. It’s not an us and them farmers versus, say, fishermen or environmentalists or anything like that. And if you can in advance find those shared values, then it’s much more easy to overcome the challenge.

EC: Yeah, and I think I was talking to Julia Jones a couple of months ago and we’re brainstorming. I think she said something, and it was ‘we have a responsibility to seek to understand diverse perspectives’, then I added on the end, ‘we also need to give ourselves the personal freedom to change our minds’. I guess for me, that crosses into the fact that we are a small part of the population in New Zealand.

Like a lot of people like those in Auckland don’t really care about farming. They might want a pristine environment, but they don’t care about farmers as such. So the best way to get people to understand your perspectives is to actually listen to them and when you can create an environment which lets people feel like they’re understood – it takes away the defensiveness and the silos, and it creates more of a safe space to continue that conversation.

So when you’re really passionate, I think, and I have to be aware of this, because I’m really passionate about Ag and what we do, but passion can show up in many different ways. And when you’re passionate about a topic like farming or the environment and both, probably, most of the farmers fit into both those camps, but it’s like, how do you talk to someone and create that curiosity to let them feel like they’re heard? And then you create that connection and then that’s progress.

The Value Chain Innovation Programme and finding the value-add.

BG: Now, you’ve had a more recent Rural Leaders experience. You were on the Value Chain Innovation Programme this year. What was that all about?

EC: Yeah. So my lane, probably, in the past year has been a lot around the environmental stuff – freshwater, irrigation. But as a sheep and beef farmer, we are doing so much behind the farm gate in terms of how we farm and environmental gains on-farm. For us, because we are main point of production is lamb and finishing lambs, we’ve seen a lot of disruption within the supply chain over the past few years, especially since COVID.

Then we had another one more recently this year, where some of the guys we’ve worked really closely with over the past few years to develop our lamb supply programme. We went to them eight years ago, probably a little bit frustrated at the time, we wanted to supply a product that worked with our lamb, our supply chain, and what was actually needed within that, so we could add more value.

So they came back to us. We said to them, ‘how can we better support what you’re trying to do so we can add value to what we’re trying to do?’ They came back and they said, we need to know when your lambs are coming three to four months ahead. We need all year-round supply, and we need to have a consistent hook weight. And we went ‘righto’ and took that away. Then over the next few years, we worked really hard to actually schedule three to four months out and supply 11 to 12 months of the year and build a system around that, but then also target those specific hook rates and get it right. So, it worked really well.

Then when we had a bit of disruption within our meat company, probably three or four months ago, it blew a bit of that away. It blew away those trusted relationships, and it’s a bit of an ‘aha’ moment for me, and I realised how vulnerable we are to what happens in that supply chain and what we do. Because when your main part of your business is producing lambs and something happens in the supply chain, that’s a big issue.

I’d looked at the Value Chain Innovation Programme last year and I thought it was probably not really in my lane. And then I was like, well, actually, it really is in my lane, because if we’re doing all this other environmental stuff and trying to add value on-farm, we need a supply chain that actually supports what we’re trying to do.

So we, as farmers with our increasing costs, our sheep and beef farmers, especially the catchment limits that you’re trying to farm within, you can’t just produce your way out of it anymore. So, the real important thing that I’m seeing is, how can we value-add?

I applied for the Value Chain Innovation Programme with Hamish (Gow) and Phil (Morrison) to look at all the different value chain examples through the North Island. We got on a bus in Auckland and went down to Hamilton, explored the Fonterra markets with the Fonterra value chain around there, going to a dairy farm and then into the Fonterra factory, and also looking at LIC and DairyNZ and how those operations also support the dairy industry.

Then we investigated kiwifruit, and we also went to Robotics Plus in Tauranga. That was pretty amazing, seeing some of the tech that and the robots that they can pull in to support different production systems.

From there, we went down to Taupo and went to Pamu, and also sheep and beef there. I’m probably missing one, but over to Hawkes Bay to look at the apples as well, and also First Light Foods and a couple of others in there, just investigating what all these systems are trying to target. From there, I figured out that we are…yeah, I feel like we are lacking a little bit in leadership to support innovating the value chain to create value for what we do.

A lot of us are also limited in the land use change that we can actually do to add value. So it’s really important to me to start thinking about how we do add value through the supply chain.

BG: It seems to be like the Holy Grail. A lot of the feedback I get at the newspaper about various regulations and environmental and sustainable goals, people just go, well, we were promised it was value-add, and we’re not seeing it. We’re still slave to the schedule, that sort of thing. And so that’s a real hard nut to crack.

EC: And it’s never going to be easy. People will probably listen and say, she’s crazy. You can’t do that. But what options do we actually have in some cases? It’s like saying, well, okay, it’s hard, but what else are we going to do? Because in New Zealand, we’re actually not… I don’t know, we’re passionate about what we do, we have an amazing industry in sheep and beef.

I guess the other thing is we’ve also…when I think about, I’m very much Ag right through my life. Everything that I see as sheep and beef farmer supports what I can do behind the farm gate and creating efficiencies within the farm gate. There’s not a lot that actually looks at how we create value through the supply chain.

So I think that was probably a bit of an ‘aha’ for me throughout the (Value Chain Programme) trip, is actually realising that, yeah, we are actually stuck. There’s been amazing work done, but it’s like, how do we realise that, yes, a lot of what we do, even with our industry bodies, is focused on production, and behind the farm gate, but there’s not a lot on added value.

BG: Well, the cool thing is, I guess, that the product is amazing already, so it’s a good launching pad.

EC: Yeah, 100 %

BG: It sounds like your experience with Rural Leaders has been pretty rewarding. Is that something you’d recommend to others.

EC: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know where we would be in New Zealand’s primary sector without Rural Leaders – there’s some great options of different programmes you can get involved with, and there’s always stuff to learn. I think even if I went back and did either of those courses again, you’d still pick up something new.

The people you meet along the way as well and I guess the networks. And I guess when I’m thinking about something and I know I don’t know the answer from those networks, I have a fairly good idea that I will know someone that will. And if they don’t, they’ll know someone that will. It’s a small, small place, the New Zealand primary sector, and there’s a lot of power and networks as well.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT, and FoodHQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

Hamish Murray podcast - Building stronger on-farm teams

Hamish Murray: Building stronger on-farm teams by getting out of the way.

An innovation story that covers the journey from an idea to the challenges of development, and to implementation. Julia Galwey, 2020 Kellogg Scholar, talks about Pearl Veal NZ, a new sustainable utilisation of the bobby calf resource.

Pearl Veal NZ was the winner of the Silver Fern Farms Market Leader Award at the 2023 Beef+LambNZ Awards in mid October.

Listen to Julia’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week I am talking to the recent winner of the Market Leader Award at the Beef and Lamb New Zealand Awards, Julia Galwey.

Bryan Gibson:
G’day Julia, how’s it going?

Julia Galwey, 2020 Kellogg Scholar and Co-Founder Pearl Veal:
Good, thank you Bryan. How are you?

BG: Pretty good, where are you calling from today?

JG: I am calling from my home office in Christchurch.

BG: Nice. Have you been getting all the wind we’ve been getting up here?

JG: Yeah, it’s been pretty mixed bag at the moment. Very much spring weather.

Winning at the Beef+LambNZ Awards.

BG: Yeah. Now, it was a pretty big time for you, the Beef and LambNZ Awards.

JG: Yeah, it was pretty neat for Pearl Veal to be recognised at such a wonderful event. Just have an evening of celebrating lots of positive things happening in the industry with the various finalists and category winners. A big thank you to Beef and LambNZ for hosting the event, and also to Silver Fern Farms for sponsoring the market leader category.

BG: Yeah. Now, can you just tell us a bit about your background in the food and fibre sector?

Background - Julia Galwey, 2020 Kellogg Scholar.

JG: Sure. I grew up on a sheep and beef and deer farm near Fairlie in South Canterbury. Then I headed off to Lincoln to do an Ag Science degree. Following that, I had six years in the agribusiness team for ANZCO Foods based in Ashburton, which was a neat team to be involved in, and a really varied role, that got me going in the meat industry.

Then in 2018, Alan McDermott and myself, we set up Agri-Food Strategy, which is our own agribusiness consultancy company. It focuses on working with farmers and agribusinesses to address strategic challenges and opportunities. I guess, again, it’s been pretty varied in terms of the work I’ve been involved with in that space.

BG: Now, you took on a Kellogg Scholarship in 2020, which, of course, was the year of the lockdown, if I remember correctly. You chose to do it on a value chain for veal. What made you think of that subject?

Kellogg research into the potential of the bobby calf resource.

JG: Good question. Yeah, I guess the idea to look at this for my report was just being around the meat industry and the bobby calf topic continues to come up in conversations. There just wasn’t really a lot of information that I could see here in New Zealand in terms of looking at older veal animals as an option for this resource, a by-product of the dairy industry. I didn’t really want to focus on the discussion or debate around the bobby calves themselves. I did for some context in my report, but I just wanted to focus on looking at one potential solution or opportunity for utilising some of that resource.

BG: Then, of course, it’s one thing to write a report about this stuff, but you carried that on and started a business. How did that get off the ground?

JG: I guess while I was doing my research report, there’s a few things that came up in terms of some learnings and drivers or motivators. One of them was probably around learning how much of a bigger risk the bobby calf thing was here in New Zealand. Especially compared to other countries in terms of the scale, with our couple of million versus Australia would be the next biggest, at around 400,000.

The report highlighted we were out there on our own in terms of how big of an issue it might be going forward. Some of that, was a bit of a driver. I learned a bit around the varying types of veal markets that there were internationally and saw some opportunity, but I really struggled to find any information on pasture-fed veal systems.

So, it became obvious that maybe there was an opportunity for New Zealand to diversify in terms of our offering in the veal space with what we’ve got here. Also, in terms of some of those credence attributes – pasture-fed, free-range, rather than copying some of the international veal systems.

From research to innovation.

As I was doing the report, Alan McDermott, who’s my business partner, was keen to have a go. We could test out what opportunity there really might be. I mean, it’s all very well, like you say, writing a report, but you just must have a go to see whether something might work or not. Halfway through my project, that’s what we started doing.

We had a quick brainstorm for a name so we could get a company set up. There are quite a few negative connotations around the name ‘veal’, which I learned a bit about while I was doing my report, in terms of some of the historic practices that used to happen in terms of how veal was raised internationally.

There was, I guess, some questions around whether we should even call it veal or not. But we talked to a few chefs, and they pointed out that we need to call it what it is. That’s what they know it is. A lot of them have trained internationally and used it before, so just stick with what it is, but make sure you build a story you can underpin your brand with. We sourced some under 12 months of age, a whole 12 of them, and found a processor that was happy to process them for us.

We set up cut specs and went along to the plant to see how it would go and then started sending some products to chefs to see what they thought. We had a development chef that we were introduced to through a contact, and he kindly took us around Wellington for a couple of days. He introduced us to a few chefs and helped us learn how that world works in terms of getting into restaurants and talking to chefs – and how to get on their menus.

Building scale.

The feedback on the product was great. We started working with the team at Synlait, including one of my fellow Kellogg cohort members, which was quite cool. They’ve been supportive in what we were trying to do and helped us connect with some of their dairy farm suppliers who were keen to give it a go and rear some calves. It’s been a nice fit for us to work with the Synlait team and some of their suppliers.

BG: How difficult is that process? You’ve got a prototype product and you’ve started with a small number of animals to begin with, then you’ve got to scale that up to something that’s a viable business. What’s the process there?

JG: It’s one of the trickier things to balance. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg in terms of you’re not quite sure in terms of what market you’ve got, but you need to get enough product that you’ve got enough to supply to a restaurant to put it on their menu. Yeah, it is a difficult balance, and some of that is just to take a risk. I guess for us, one of the things that we were quite focused on was building around the story and attributes we wanted to go around our brand. With some of that starting with animal welfare for us in producing the best calf possible.

The rearing regime and how it works.

There’s quite a lot of challenge in terms of veal as anything must be produced before the calf is 12-months old, so a lot of the challenge is around getting it to grow as fast as possible and to reach a heavy weight in that time. It needs a good start in life as a calf, to be able to do that. Some of our system was built around a particular rearing regime in terms of good colostrum.

Then we only use whole fresh milk rather than milk powder, which has had a lot of the good bits taken out of it. Milk is what’s designed for the calf, so let’s just give it that and obviously some pasture as well. But because of that rearing regime, we can’t just go out and get any calf on the market.

It starts right from the start in terms of what we’ve built to underpin our brand. That also is a little bit harder in terms of, like you say, we’re planning what we need over a year in advance, and you don’t necessarily know what your market is then. A bit of risk, I guess, and just a balance of starting smallish so that you learn the risks, learn the things you need to iron out as you go.

BG: Getting back to your rearing regime, that must mean you need to work pretty closely with the farmers who are actually doing this stuff?

Collaborating for success.

JG: Definitely. I think the other thing in that space is the Synlait farms that we’re working with are all certified ‘Lead with Pride’, which again, helps underpin animal welfare and the colostrum management. Obviously, our contracts have got the rearing regime outlined in them, and we talk them through what that looks like and why. We also don’t have meal as part of our rearing regime. Part of that is around wanting to remain grain-free, so 100% pasture-fed and antibiotic-free, so that we can look at going into the US market in time.

Again, it’s the whole fresh milk, no meal. It is a bit of a change to how calves are traditionally reared here. We’ve got to work closely with the farmers on what that looks like. We’re thankful for those first few farms that were willing to take a bit of a risk and rear and finish calves for us.

We were a couple of random people saying, here, we want to contract you to rear these calves in a particular way and finish them through to an age and weight that’s not traditional here. They had to trust a bit that we would take them when we said we would and have a processor to process them and pay them.

I guess that’s probably also part of what’s been quite helpful working within the Synlait team. That helped farmers have a go. There’s just some great farmers out there that are keen to try something different and learn with us, which has been nice.

BG: Yeah. Now, who are you selling to now? What are your export markets, or locally?

JG: Currently, we are pretty much mostly domestic market into high-end restaurants. We’ve just started doing a little bit into some smaller retailers here, and we’ve just started a little bit of export.

BG: Now, obviously, the bobby calf issue is one that New Zealand’s farming industry is grappling with. Do you see this type of initiative as part of a solution?

A new veal value chain.

JG: Yeah, I mean, the bobby calf issue is obviously a big social license to operate topic in the dairy industry, and it’s a pretty tricky thing to navigate with the views of community here and also our customers and consumers globally.

I guess we just have to keep asking ourselves if we’ve got practices that we’re comfortable and being transparent about, and if not, then what are our opportunities and solutions to do something differently? I guess that’s really what we’re trying to do with Pearl Veal is.

I don’t like to focus too much on the bobby calf aspect of it. But more the opportunity that exists to take some of that resource and add value to produce a really quality veal-based product with a story and a brand that’s underpinned by animal welfare standards and a pasture-based system that we believe in. We’re proud to share with chefs and customers and consumers here.

BG: Of course, back to where this all started, the Kellogg Programme – how did you find it? Is it something you’d recommend to others who were thinking about doing it?

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme - where it started.

JG: Yeah, absolutely. It was such a good course and I guess a real opportunity to network too. We had such a great cohort of people. It was a good cross-sector group of people. You get to meet people that you wouldn’t normally be working with and the people and the speakers that come in are incredible. It really broadens your thinking and opens your networks and I would highly recommend it to anyone considering it.

That’s why I did it. It’s something that once people have done it, they’re always recommending to anyone that hasn’t. If you get that opportunity, jump at it. I think it’s one of those things that probably never feels like the right time when you’re in your working career because you’re always busy or home life as well. You just have to jump in and do it.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT and FoodHQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Dr Alison Stewart – FAR and the role of arable systems in agriculture.

In this podcast, Dr Alison Stewart, CEO at the Foundation for Arable Research, talks with Farmers Weekly’s Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson, about the role of arable in agriculture, her role at FAR and the delivery of research that benefits growers.

Dr Stewart also discusses her involvement with the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme and the importance of exposure to diversity of thought for leaders in Food and Fibre.

Listen to Alison’s podcast or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week I am talking to Dr Alison Stewart, CEO at FAR, the Foundation for Arable Research, and a regular speaker on the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme.

Bryan Gibson:
G’day Alison. How’s it going?

Dr Alison Stewart – Chief Executive Officer at the Foundation for Arable Research (FAR).
Yeah, great. Thanks for having me.

BG: Great to have you here. Now, you’re the Chief Executive of Far. What’s been happening in your world lately?

The current arable context.

AS: Well, we’ve just had a referendum. So, every six years, our levy peers vote to decide whether FAR is doing a good job and they want to continue paying their levy. So that happened just last month. I guess for the last year, we have been focused a little bit on the referendum and making sure that the growers know what we’re doing and what value it delivers. And fortunately, yes, we got good support.

Although I have to say getting growers to vote was the biggest challenge. They’ve just got so much happening in their lives at the moment and so much information being thrown at them that they’re almost in a situation where finding the time to vote in a referendum was not a high priority. That actually was the biggest challenge, convincing them to get onto their computer and vote.

BG: And running the organisation, what does your job entail? What do you do in a week?

AS: My job is to make sure that everybody else in the company is doing their job really well. I’m joining all the dots. We’ve got some amazing research staff who are out there doing applied research, trying to find new management systems, new tools, new technologies that will assist our farmers.

We also have a lot of extension people focused on trying to support them with all of the compliance regulations that are coming down the track. And then we also have to deal with the biosecurity incursions. We’re dealing with two at the moment.

Amongst all of that, we’re just trying to promote to the general public, to the other sectors, to the government, the value of arable systems and the value that they bring to New Zealand agriculture. I jump around a lot, getting involved in lots of things, across lots of areas, at different levels of responsibility. It’s never a dull day.

BG: Yeah. Our Food and Fibre Sector is dominated by the big two animal proteins. I guess, as you say, the animal sector is as big and successful of its own accord, but in some ways plays second or third fiddle sometimes?

AS: Oh, very much so. That frustrates me in the sense that we actually underpin the livestock sector because we produce all of the seed and the grass seed that they need to grow their pastures to feed their cows. If we go under, then the livestock sector is going to be substantially worse off.

We also produce a large amount of the animal feed the dairy sector and the beef sector and the poultry sector need. So, I’m not sure that we ever get full recognition for the important role we play, not only in our own right through producing milling wheat and quality seed crops, but also underpinning the livestock sector. I try to remind my colleagues in the dairy and beef and sheep sector that they need us as much as we need them.

World-leading seed production.

BG: I guess a lot of people do just think of fields of maize or barley or wheat, but that seed production part of things is really important, but also quite an opportunity and a success for New Zealand, isn’t it? We’re quite good at it.

AS: Absolutely. It does help that the big global seed companies can see that they can get out of Northern Hemisphere seasons and they can get seed crops being produced in New Zealand. We have really good environmental conditions.

We have good quality certification, verification and accountability systems. We’re seen to be a very important seed producer. That’s really good from the perspective of an arable farmer because it provides a really nice rotation.

We’ve got our foundational cereal crops, but then we’ve got the seed crops in the foundation of the rotation and that gives a nice diversity, but it also introduces the opportunity to capture another revenue source.

Dr Alison Stewart - A CEO’s career path.

BG: Now, how did you get to the position you’re in now? What’s your career been like? What did you do when you left school?

AS: Well, I mean, gosh, I’ve been around the block. I’ve always been interested in plants. Even as a child, I was always out in the garden with my mum planting and looking after plants. I did botany at university, and then I did a PhD in plant pathology, and then I came to New Zealand.

Obviously, I’m Scottish, and I came to New Zealand, got a lecturing job at Auckland University, and it was the old Botany department. That was how I started off my career being an academic, and I had 10 years at Auckland. Then I moved down to Lincoln University because I wanted to be doing more applied research and more closer to the actual farming sector. I was 18 years at Lincoln University as an academic, running a big research centre, looking at sustainable production systems.

Then I decided to challenge myself a little bit more and I went off to California and ran a biotech company. Then I came back to New Zealand and headed up forestry science in Rotorua with Scion. Then I moved from there and came to be the CEO of FAR.

I’m probably relatively unusual in the sense that I’ve been in academia, I’ve been in the CRI system, I’ve been in a commercial company and I’m now working in an industry body. I’ve worked across horticulture, vegetable cropping, herbal cropping, and forestry. So it gives me a nice broad perspective on what’s happening, particularly in the plant-based sectors in New Zealand.

FAR - delivering the arable research that benefits growers.

BG: Well, that’s quite a CV. I’m interested in your interest in applied science and knowledge transfer. That’s something that’s been talked about in our sector as something that works pretty well, but does need work, if you know what I mean. Is that something that you think is moving the dial over the years?

AS: Oh, most certainly. I mean, there isn’t much point in doing research if you’re not going to get the results of the research out, being taken up and used by farmers and growers. FAR in particular, over the last 25 years, has been an exemplar of an organisation that has effectively delivered its research to benefit the growers.

It’s becoming more difficult because the environment is so much more challenging for growers. I won’t say the good old days, because I never think that the old days are actually that good. But in the past, FAR would do research and it would be identifying a new plant growth regulator or a new fungicide or a better fertiliser programme. And you’d go out and you’d say, if you do X, Y and Z, that will deliver a one-ton increase in yield.

That’s a really easy story to tell. The growers will go, that’s a good idea. I’ll do that. The growers get a one-ton increase and they think, Oh, my levy is good value for money for us doing a good job. But we’ve driven yield optimisation pretty close to the optimum.

A challenging arable environment.

Now the challenge is, how do we maintain those optimum yields given all of the constraints that growers now have around input costs and compliance around fresh water and climate change. That’s a much, much harder knowledge exchange programme because you’re potentially, and quite often, telling the growers something that they don’t want to hear. So you’re always trying to find a way in which you can present that information in as positive a way as possible.

At this moment in time in New Zealand, farmers feel as if they’re really under the pump with people throwing compliance regulations at them, their cost of production is going up. So often their headspace is not necessarily that favourably inclined towards hearing some quite difficult messaging. It’s challenging. It’s a really challenging space for the growers, and it’s a really challenging space for the labour organisations.

FAR and the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme.

BG: Very much so. Now, turning to Rural Leaders, you have a bit to do with the Kellogg Programme, is that correct?

AS: Yeah. I mean, they roll me out twice a year where I come and I talk to the new cohort of rural leaders. I’m one of these people that, and it causes me a lot of angst over the years, I tend to just say exactly what I think. That can get me into a lot of trouble!

I really enjoy challenging young people around what they’re thinking, why they’re thinking it, and what they want to achieve in their careers. I love having discussions around what leadership actually means, because leadership means quite different things to different people.

In New Zealand agriculture at this moment in time, with all of the challenges that are coming up, it’s really hard to be a leader because levy organisations, for example, are reliant on doing what their levy peers want them to do, and that sometimes prevents you from being able to take a true leadership position.

I really like talking about some of those challenges, and it’s a good environment because it’s not out in the public arena. You’re not going to get hung out to dry on social media, but you’re able to have some really honest and sometimes quite painful discussions about how New Zealand agriculture needs to move into the future and the changes that need to be made. And that young cohort of Kellogg leaders are up for those kinds of discussions, and I just love it.

BG: I mean, it’s an interesting group because most of them already have a career and then they have a day job, and then Kellogg is back to school. So I guess it’s different from your previous work in academia, where it was 9:00 to 5:00 learning. And that has some upside, I think, of the Kellogg Programme, do you think?

Kellogg exposes leaders to diversity of thought and opinion.

AS: I think it’s a fantastic programme because it provides an opportunity to bring multiple thought processes to the table. Scott Champion, who’s one of the key Facilitators on the Programme; he’s very well connected and he can bring quite disparate views to the discussion.

That’s really important because if you stay in your own industry, in your own space, in your silo, then all that happens is that everybody validates preconceived ideas and it’s really good to be challenged.

I think that’s what the Kellogg Leadership Programme does. It makes you realise that what you thought you knew and what you thought was a valid belief, there may actually be alternative viewpoints. You have to open your mind to different ways of thinking and different people’s perceptions of agriculture and different conclusions that you can draw from the vast amount of research that’s out there.

It’s a fantastic learning opportunity for young people to avoid getting into a siloed mantra of just believing the here and now and what people they tend to engage with think. It’s a bit like when you google something, the algorithm sitting in behind Google can work out what your preconceived ideas are, and therefore they tend to give you links to things that validate those preconceived ideas.

I think we’ve always got to try and make sure that we don’t get into that mentality of thinking that because we believe something now, that means it must be true.

BG: Cross-discipline research or work in real time, isn’t it?

AS: Absolutely, yeah.

BG: So, you’d recommend the Programme to anyone thinking about the big issues facing the sector, and thinking about leadership?

AS: I think you have to be prepared to put time and effort into it. It’s like anything in life that if you don’t commit and put your passion and energy into it, you’re not going to get the same amount of benefit out of it. I think you have to be prepared to come to the table and listen to those diverse views and be prepared to change your opinion about things.

If you come to the Kellogg Programme with a preconceived idea that you’re right and everyone else is wrong, you’re not going to get the benefit out of the Programme.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT and Food HQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

In this podcast, Julian Reti Kaukau, 2021 Kellogg Scholar, talks with Farmers Weekly’s Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson, about his Kellogg research and to share insights from his work with MPI Māori Agribusiness.

In reference to his research, Julian reflects on the historic prowess of the Waikato Maniapoto Māori in the agriculture and horticulture sectors and suggests that by harnessing the wisdom of the ancestors who once nurtured the Whenua, today’s Kaitiaki can make profound and impactful economic and sustainable decisions for the Whenua and their futures.

Julian believes that Māori who have been disconnected from their homelands can better reconnect with their Tupuna Whenua, fostering a profound sense of Tūrangawaewae, enhancing the Mana of the Whānau and Hapū, honoring important Tīkanga such as Manaakitanga and be given the ability to uphold the crucial role of Ahi Kaa.

Julian completed his Kellogg research on how can Waikato Maniapoto Māori landowners increase productivity whilst improving the environmental protection of their land?

Listen to Julian’s podcast here or read the transcript below. As always, the transcript has been modified for readability.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

Kia ora, you’ve joined the Ideas That Grow podcast, brought to you by Rural Leaders. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant ideas that grow so our regions can flourish. Ideas that Grow is presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week I am talking to Julian Reti Kaukau, a 2021 Kellogg Scholar and currently the Facilitator Programme Lead for Māori Agribusiness at the Ministry for Primary Industries. How’re doing Julian?

Julian Reti Kaukau – 2021 Kellogg Scholar, Facilitator Programme Lead for Māori Agribusiness at MPI.

I’m doing great. Thank you, Bryan.

BG: Cool. Where are you calling in from today?

JR: I’m calling in from Rotorua in the sunny Bay of Plenty.

BG: Now, you were a 2021 Kellogg Scholar. How did you find that experience?

Completing Kellogg and settling on a research topic.

JR: The Programme was geared up to bring out the most in terms of that academic space within myself, that may have been neglected since I left high school. In all reality, having gone into the workforce pretty much as I turned 18, having the opportunity to go into the academic space was quite onerous.

I felt the Kellogg Programme helped guide and shape me. Patrick Aldwell was instrumental in assisting me to basically learn how to write, how to write well, and get my writing out there in the public space so that I could share what was on my heart and mind. In summary, I think that’s what the Kellogg Programme helped to do – is to really get those thoughts out.

I think those thoughts were really great ideas – at least to me – the Programme enabled me to get these out there in a more public domain and allow others to provide some feedback, thoughts and alignments on some of those ideas. I think that’s what Kellogg really did for me.

BG: Now, what did you focus your studies on? What was your report about?

JR: Initially, it was a bit of going around in circles trying to flesh out your topic. I actually started wanting to do a report around Māori Agri-business. But as you get further into the Programme, you realise you might have to go a little bit deeper, more specific and compartmentalise your particular subject because Māori Agri-business is quite broad in general.

I specifically chose to focus on the area that I whakapapa to, or have genealogical ties to, which is the Waikato and Maniapoto area, namely the King Country.

Embracing history for an informed future as Kaitiaki of the whenua.

JR: My topic was around what’s happened over the last 150 years with having a thriving agricultural primary sector within the Waikato, Maniapoto. Then leading into the 1860s period with the land wars and then the following land confiscations of almost 1.2 million acres of land being confiscated between 1860 and 1865, and a further 1 million acres being confiscated through various legislative policies between 1870 and 1970.

I think what really made me want to focus in on my own people, my own backyard, if you want to call it, is that we were once a powerhouse in agriculture. Our people were quite fast and quick to pick up the knowledge around agriculture, and I always felt that the future for our people is within the land.

So in order for us to be good stewards or kaitiaki of the whenua moving forward, we have to know a thing or two about how to look after the land. Whether that be in primary production or in an environmental capacity. That’s why I chose to go deep on around how our people could embrace the history that we once had, take those learnings and knowledge of our elders, right through the pre 1860 period, the post 1860 period up to about 1970, and having 1970 till today.

Then really look at the leadership that we had within our hapu and our iwi and our whana and take learnings out on how we could maintain our mana, maintain our footprint, our foundations of our land. For me, I believe that’s through making the land sustainably economical, whether it be a dairy, sheep and beef, forest, plantation, horticultural enterprise, whatever. But doing it right, doing it properly, pretty much, Bryan.

BG: There seems to be a movement to obviously the sustainability movement in farming is finally, I guess, getting momentum. That links beautifully to some of the things you’ve been talking about in terms of kaitiakiakitanga, and manaaki whenua. Is that something you found in your studies?

Kaitiakitanga and the sustainabilty movement.

JR: I wouldn’t say that I found it in my studies. It’s probably a concept that I’ve always grown up with. I’ve seen it enacted or lived out by my grandmother, my grandfather, out there on their quarter acre with the most beautiful garden, the māra, that you would ever see, feeding the masses.

Then as I got older and went to visit the cousins in the rural areas and seeing them out on the land and seeing how they connect and relate to our whenua, be it partaking in a mahinga kai, which is the collection of watercress, pūha, and eels. Or collecting kai moana, seafood, and just really acknowledging that the sustenance of all human life and animal life comes from Mother Earth.

There’s a reciprocity philosophy that co-joins guardianship of the land where we acknowledge that our life comes from the land. Therefore, we must do what we can to ensure that that life is going to be enjoyed by our children and our grandchildren, but at the same time, they create a life of some type of bountiful sustenance while we’re here on Earth.

In terms of the kaitiakitanga, I know there’s a huge movement towards sustainability that’s probably more in light of the impacts the rapid industrialisation of the primary sector has had. Now we’re now starting to see those impacts visibly, be it with nutrient-dense rivers or waterways or underground aquifers being depleted, and in the erosion of our soils.

It usually just comes hand-in-hand when you’re seeing those types of impacts, whether you’re Māori or non-Māori. You feel a deep sense to try and protect and restore that so that your children and your grandchildren can enjoy the same economic sustainability that you currently or once enjoyed yourself.

So in terms of kaitiakitanga, it’s wrapped around those points I’ve just mentioned Bryan, and more. And when I say more, so for Māori, it comes to whakapapa, which is the connection that you have through your ancestors to particular land and the efforts that your ancestors put into their land to maintain it for the future generations – to have a living of it.

There’s a dual concept of sustainability, but also protecting what was set out by your forefathers and mothers and making sure that’s passed down to the next generation. There’s probably a lot in there.

BG: Yes. And you’re still involved in some projects in that region, aren’t you? You were working for a Haukinga mai ki te whenua. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Reconnecting our people with the whenua.

JR: Yeah, when you work in the Māori space, if you don’t have a proper employment contract, then you’re pretty much a volunteer. I’m volunteering on a number of trusts and boards.

Probably the one that’s the closest to my heart is Hokianga mai ki te whenua, which is a project initiated by my whanau to bring relations brought up in urban settings, in cities, or even overseas, like Australia, and connect them back to their foundational roots.

It gives them a sense of where their ancestors once dwelled and lived, and a sense of their own belonging and where they come from. Basically, just to answer the question, who am I?

Then it’s a journey. We have multiple engagements, which we call wānanga, which can be also called workshops, over a period of years. Then it’s building on each wānanga. One could be around, where do we get this land from? How did we come to be where we are today? Currently, 95% of our people live outside of our land-based areas. How do we bring our people back?

To do that, you need to have some type of economic base. All we have is land. What can we do with the land we have to ensure we can bring at least some of our people back home so that the mana, the mana whenua of our whenua is upheld and our fires, or what we call ahi kā, continue to burn.

BG: Also in your day job, you work in the Māori Agribusiness section of MPI? Is that right? What does that involve?

JR: It involves a number of jobs, mainly listening, first and foremost. Listening to the many pātai and ideas of our people. Being in a special place where we stand as conduits between Crown funds, the Crown support, and the aspirations of our people.

Mahi in Māori Agribusiness.

What I have found to date, depending on which groups that I’m working with, is that a lot of our people don’t have a strong understanding on how to seek support to assist them with their land aspirations. Whether this be to potentially take over a long-term lease of their land leased out to the local neighbour for the last 60, 70 years. Yes, I’ve seen a few of those. What do I do with this land now?

A good example here would be to be able to get some expert advice, some sound feedback on what to do with their land. Usually, it requires a person of knowledge and experience on certain areas, such as land use options, which requires a bit of money to pay someone to get that done.

Now, whanau that have been in those situations, where they’ve had no money coming into a land block, have the opportunity to work with Māori Agribusiness, to work with the experts that we currently have employed within our team, and also the networks that we have outside of MPI, to assist them in making sound decisions for the future of their land. That’s just one small aspect.

We cover a number of areas within the directorate of Māori Agribusinesses, but the main overall objective is to assist our people with their economic, sustainable aspirations. That is, producing healthy produce from their whenua that’s going to sustain their people, their whanau, their communities, and ultimately, New Zealand as a whole.

BG: That’s excellent. Māori agribusiness in New Zealand is currently a powerhouse, but as you mentioned, with the history that we share in New Zealand, it’s also in some ways just still getting started. What are your hopes for the future on how Māori agribusiness can thrive?

Future hopes for Māori Agribusiness.

JR: It’s a good question, Bryan. I’ve been involved in Māori agribusiness for most of my working life, almost 22 years. What I’ve seen over this time is probably the lack of capability and capacity within our own people, Māori, to be able to work within their iwi organisations. Especially in relation to the primary sector assets they may hold and to really drive from the front.

That could either be a member in the executive team or governance team, being able to make tupuna or mukapuna decisions, as future decisions that impact on our children.

The reason why I highlight that is because a lot of our organisations, they are currently hiring the best people to run our primary sector assets. The best people may not necessarily be Māori people. I find that some of their thinking that comes from running a multimillion-dollar enterprise is largely economic thinking, not necessarily Māori thinking.

That’s why I have mentioned that the lack of capacity and capability within our people being an area of focus I would like to see be invested in and to continually improve on. This, so we have more of our people, their whakapapa to the whenua, making decisions about the future of their whenua.

BG: That’s great. Just circling back to the Kellogg Programme, is it something you’d recommend for others?

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme and digging deeper.

JR: Most definitely. It was a challenge and something that I had a peripheral understanding of. I’ve seen others go through the Programme over the years, but it was something I thought that was maybe a little bit out of my league. That’s mainly because I don’t have a strong academic background.

I pretty much left school 16, 17, and went straight into the labour workforce. That’s where I felt was my place and I really loved it there. But over the years, you come across great mentors and you build great relationships, and you start to realise that you could probably do more than you think you can.

Joining the Kellogg Programme for me was a bit of an out-of-the-box experience, putting myself out there. I’m quite introverted by nature, so having to promote myself amongst others that were also vying to be a part of the Kellogg Programme at the time I joined. It was out of my comfort zone. But then being a part of the process, being part of the cohort, you meet some great people, some awesome people that are up and coming and doing big things in the primary sector today.

You make some great mates; you make some great friends. But also, the Programme is well thought out in terms of the people that are leading it. Scott Champion comes to mind. The way that he facilitated and drove the cohort from start to finish, keeping us all on track, keeping us all to the tasks, that helps you dig deeper and brings out the best in you. If I can encourage anyone that’s thinking about wanting to do the Kellogg Programme, do it if you have the opportunity to do so.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Hamish Murray: Building stronger on-farm teams by getting out of the way.

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

Dan Eb, 2021 Nuffield Scholar, is based in Auckland. Dan runs Dirt Road Comms, established to support those building a more just food system. He is also the founder of Open Farms.

With one foot on a Kaipara farm and one in the city, Dan is well placed to talk about the importance of re-connecting urban kiwis with our land, food and farmers.

Awarded a Nuffield Scholarship in 2021, Dan completed his research on
The Home Paddock: A strategy for values-led redesign of the domestic food system.

Listen to Dan’s podcast or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson. I’m the Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week we are checking in with a recent Nuffield Scholar, Daniel Eb. How’s it going?

Daniel Eb – 2021 Nuffield Scholar, founder of Open Farms and marketing specialist.
Kia Ora. Very well, thanks.

BG: And where are you calling from?

DE: I’m calling from Auckland, but half the time you’ll find me at the family farm up in Kaipara.

BG: And is that where you grew up, in Kaipara?

Work fuelled by rural and urban perspectives.

DE: I mostly grew up in the city. I was very lucky to have a foot in both camps. We bought a farm when I was a teenager, and I would normally spend the weeks in the city. Then, either most weekends or every second weekend up at the farm. The older I’ve got, the more time I’ve been able to spend up there.

BG: I know a little bit about your work over the last few years. I mean, you’ve married those two aspects of your upbringing into a career, haven’t you?

DE: That’s exactly it. My mother’s been in public relations for a long time and my father’s a farmer. So I thought, you know what, let’s do agri-comms.

BG: You run Dirt Road Communications. Tell me a little bit about that.

DE: Dirt Road Communications is a purpose marketing agency. I’m selective of the people I work with. They need to be driving towards a shared mission of mine, which is a just and regenerative food system in Aotearoa, New Zealand.

I have the privilege of working with people like AgriWomen’s Development Trust, who are really focused on building capability amongst farmers. I work with local food system advocates as well. We’re looking more at systemic issues and big changes in food and farming. I support these people with digital marketing and brand positioning, helping them understand their value proposition, building big projects, that sort of thing.

Forging stronger connections to food and our farming system.

BG: That is in the same wheelhouse as your Nuffield Scholar Report, isn’t it?

DE: The report was an opportunity to slow down and look at the big picture as to the change these organisations are driving for. It was about articulating, well, what the future looks like when we achieve a food and farming system in New Zealand that benefits producers and every kiwi, because food is really important and it doesn’t just drive our economy, it drives our families, it drives our culture, and it drives our health.

The report was an opportunity to step back and paint a picture of what success could look like when we change that system.

BG: Yeah. It’s a criticism or a challenge often talked about in terms of our food production sector that it’s so good at certain things, but that it’s lost the connection to its own community, if you know what I mean? Because we export 95 % of all the food we produce. Therefore, all our food prices are driven by international market forces, like the price of cheese, which gets on everyone’s nerves. Is that something that you were looking to address?

DE: I think you’ve explained it really well. I like to tell stories to explain these big concepts. The thing I think about is, if you’re a kiwi mum living in, I don’t know, Auckland, Wellington, or Christchurch, 84 % of us live urban lives now, so you’re one of that big majority. You’re aware that in the background food and farming is important to New Zealand as an economic driver. But, the thing that you’re most worried about is, what are you feeding your child for dinner? Is it healthy? Is it nutritious? Has it been grown as sustainably as possible? Is it affordable?

As growers and producers, we’re really good at the production side of things, but that relationship is really important. That Kiwi mum’s kids are going to be the people that we want to recruit into food and farming later on. If they’ve got a broken relationship with food and farming, it’s going to be really difficult to encourage them into food and farming careers. That Kiwi mum’s a voter. She might end up voting for parties that want to be more restrictive on food production.

We’re seeing that now with all the regulation that’s coming through. There’s a missed opportunity that she’s not going to jump on social media or when she’s overseas, badmouth food and farming in New Zealand. There’s a missed opportunity to turn her into an advocate for what we’re doing because she has a broken relationship with food and farming or with farming.

How do we strengthen the connection to food and food production?

We can’t think about farming without thinking about its role in society, and this is now an urbanised society. Until we start building things to rebuild that connection and start taking that relationship seriously, we’re going to continue to see bad results. I think those three big areas; recruitment, social license, and the ability to tell a cool, authentic, proven story overseas.

BG: So how do you go about unpacking this, or solving this, or moving the dial on this problem in a Nuffield Scholar Report? Where did you start? How do you go about it?

DE: Slowly and painfully is probably the best description. The first place I went to was to take a really zoomed-out view, and think, how do we often think about food and farming, and how should we think about food and farming? We often think about it as a business and as an industry, but I feel that food and farming doesn’t necessarily belong just there. I think it should be thought about more as a public good.

Food and farming as a public good.

An example for public good is health care and education. These are sectors within our society that have a high degree of touch with everyday New Zealanders. There’s a whole lot of trust, like social license is almost unquestioned. No one questions whether we need education. It’s just there.

I’ve had the privilege of having a lot of time on farm, so I know that the farm can be a place of healing, it can be a place of learning, it could be a place of inspiration, it could be a place of health. In my eyes, farming has the ability to transcend just a mere industry: shoes, iPhones, socks, handbags, and actually sit in a public good space.

I think that reframe is really important because it opens up a lot of potential. Now you can start saying, well, how would we make farming more like education? Why is education such a trusted sector? It opens up more opportunities for things like funding, because now you can say, can we go to the Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Social Development, and the MPI together and do system change. Because it’s really good for society. So, you’re suddenly in a different ball game just from that mindset shift. So that was the first bit.

BG: And you’re not talking about, for example, if we look at education, a lot of the schools are run centrally. You’re talking more about a partnership in a way of looking at things. So farming businesses go, my bottom lines are met by making a profit on these animals that I raise, but also taking these things off in a social or environmental sense. Is that the idea?

DE: Yeah, that’s the starting place. Then you start to think about what concrete solutions would look like. Education might not be the best example in this instance. Healthcare is probably a better example. To me, healthcare is quite interesting because you effectively have two models that sit side by side. You’ve got a private health care model where people pay for service, and then you’ve got a public health care model. Interestingly, doctors flip between the two. You can have public doctors that operate privately and vice-versa.

Regardless of which system you play in, every doctor gets paid well. It’s a very respected role in society. To me, they’re solutions that mindset will prompt you into.

A relatively concrete solution that I could see is if there was an organisation set up to encourage farmers who are farming close to cities to transition to local food economies and local food business models. Whether that’s community supported agriculture or technology driven food distribution, like Happy Cow Milk, which is the Fonterra factory-in-a-box model. That has some government support because it would be required to reduce the amount that some consumers are paying for food and it could operate on something like a postcode system where, depending on your postcode, you pay a different amount for your food.

But alternatively, a farmer who’s further away from town would probably participate in the more status quo export model running through your processor and then selling our kai overseas. There’s no reason why those two things can’t sit well blended together. But by having that, some farmers incentivised to operate in that local system, you’re solving all these other big issues like social license, like recruitment, like people understanding where their food comes from, and also creating this really fertile ground to tell a really compelling international story about food security and how important kai is to New Zealanders, and this is how we treat it. You’re creating content and you’re building this overseas provenance story as well.

So, a lot of it really does sit within that reframe that, you know what, smart investment from industry and government into these public good food system models, particularly local, can net some massive results in the long-run.

Opening farms for a win-win.

BG: I guess we should mention, since you’re the bright spark behind Open Farms, that programme was run on a lot of farms and most of them were relatively close to urban centres. That showed that there was appetite from both farmers and from the general public to come together and engage on this food journey.

DE: Exactly, and I think if we could build local food models that by design connect urban kiwis with the sources of at least some of their food production, then there’s an economic rationale to a farmer to host open days. Now there’s an economic rationale for a farmer to connect with a local school, and maybe there’s some financial incentives that go along with that. Suddenly, you’re breaking that barrier, that 60-minute barrier between city limits and where farming starts.

You start blurring that line and I think the blurring that line is really important if we’re going to solve some of these entrenched issues that urbanism has created over the last 50, 60 years. But we need new models to do that. We can’t just hope a couple of open farm days are going to do it. We actually have to do relatively large system change to design the outcomes that we want.

BG: What else did you find in your report that you think could help in this values driven food transition?

DE: I think it’s important to believe this change is already happening. This isn’t something we have to manufacture. This idea of citizen connected businesses or new business models; this stuff’s already happening organically. It’s about latching on to that. Instead of seeing that as a threat to the export talk, dominated, centralised system of food, we see that as a really supportive ancillary model that the two can gel well together. I do just want to reiterate that these two models aren’t in competition at all. Quite the opposite. I know when we talk about public good, it starts getting into the realm of politics and words like socialism get thrown around and stuff like that, I think that’s a side track.

At the end of the day, we’ve got to focus on the outcomes we actually want and be a bit ideologically agnostic. This is 2023, and we need every tool we’ve got on the table to fix some of these deeply entrenched problems. In terms of other stuff, I think there’s a whole lot of smart tactical plays that we can do to get us there as well.

The Nuffield Global Focus Programme and public good overseas.

These are things like social diversifications that we can layer on to farms. I’ve just come back from my Nuffield GFP travel, and one of the things that really stood out was a bunch of people in the Netherlands who are using their farms in partnership with local health care providers or local schools. These are financial business transactions and having kids come onto the farm regularly as a partnership with local schools. It’s becoming an education platform.

There was one farmer who had partnered with a local healthcare provider to bring kids with learning disabilities onto the farm. It was a collaboration between a healthcare provider, a learning disability specialist, and the farmer. They were all co-collaborating to create this programme for those kids. Now, the funder is the Ministry of either education or health care in that instance. But that diversification costs the farmer to build a hut to make sure they don’t get rained on and some time to build the system. But at the end of the day, that’s a revenue generating diversification that he’s layered onto his farm. That costs him very little and it’s returning him a good profit.

We’re desperate for these ways to eke out some more margin off our landscapes. I just think that these community connection diversifications are an unearthed gem. They cost very little to do. Yes, there’s some soft skills that are required, and there’d be some upskilling, and you’d have to get relatively comfortable with new people coming onto the farm too. But it’s a lot cheaper than putting in kiwifruit for example. Then you’re also running the risk of a bad harvest and all that stuff. There’s very little risk here.

I think in a time when traditional food production on our farms is becoming harder; pick a reason: government regulation, higher import costs, climate change, poor returns on global markets, this social diversification is just gold. I just don’t feel that enough farmers, particularly in those peri-urban areas, are seeing that. That’s what a large part of my work is, building projects that make it easy to move into this new citizen-connected farming model, which I think is going to be really valuable for farmers who are cash-strapped.

BG: Now, you mentioned your travels. That’s obviously a big part of the Nuffield. Any other highlights from your trips you abroad?

DE: Heaps. I’m trying to write up a bit of a reflections document now. It’s hard because I keep trying to add stuff in instead of taking stuff out. We had a great group. We went to Japan, then Israel, then the Netherlands, then Washington DC, and the Central Valley in California. To me, a highlight was seeing what the driving force behind agriculture in these different contexts was. We’d go to Israel where water infrastructure was at the scale and of the excellent standard that it is, not because of government policies or anything like that, but it was all done for security reasons. Security is the number one driver in Israel. So, agriculture is almost a by-product of security. That’s what happens when you fight three existential wars in the last 70 odd years.

Interestingly, the big driver in a place like Japan was tradition. They’ve actually inadvertently figured out through trial and error and population growth in a relatively restricted coastal plain, that they have to fuse agriculture and urban life together. Outside of downtown Tokyo, the landscape is a mix of residential business, rice paddies, vegetable gardens.

They don’t have a social license problem because their geography represents that breaking of the barriers and fusion of urban and rural and food production and the lifestyles that I’ve been talking about. The geography has pushed them into a space. It’s interesting to look at those places and think, Well, what’s our driving force? If we’re honest with ourselves, right now, it’s agribusiness. It’s an economic powerhouse. There’s nothing right or wrong with that. But to me, that feels very limited. I think there’s a lot we can explore and experiment on top of it as just an economic powerhouse.

I think food and farming can be a public good. Interestingly, I think our geography, this idea that we’re basically restricted as Kiwis to our urban centres, and there’s a whole lot of farmland in between, that’s a huge barrier. We’ve got to build little strings and break little gaps in that wall, particularly in our peri-urban areas, to get where we want to go. That being a society where people are really proud of food and farming, are healthy, and see food and farming not just as a viable career, but as a mission and a purpose for something that they want to do for the rest of their life.

I think that’s entirely achievable. We just got to build things to do it.

The Nuffield Scholarship experience.

BG: How have you found the Nuffield experience overall?

DE: Awesome. Honestly, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I think everyone’s experience is a little bit different. I think it can give you what you’re looking for, even if you don’t really know what that is. For me, it was time. It was a forced requirement to sit down and write out my manifesto, almost. These thoughts are running through my head. How are they all working together? What am I aiming for? And that was really valuable for me. It’s enabled me to articulate some of these things, which are pretty hard ideas to describe. And so Nuffield gave me time, whereas I can say that for a lot of my fellow scholars, Nuffield gave them experience, or some learning about themselves that they wouldn’t otherwise have got. For me, it was time.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT and Food HQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

Listen to "Mel Poulton - Transformation before transaction: The potential of NZ’s Food and Fibre IP." on Spreaker.

Mel Poulton is a farmer first and foremost, running a sheep and beef farm based in the Tararua District. She is also finishing her tenure as New Zealand’s Agriculture Trade Envoy.

Awarded a Nuffield Scholarship in 2014, Mel completed her research on
Capturing Value: Building a sweet spot between trade negotiations, market access and the exports of expertise.

Listen to Mel’s podcast above or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

Welcome to the ‘Ideas that Grow’ podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. This week I’m talking to agricultural trade specialist and farmer Mel Poulton. Now, you were a Nuffield scholar in 2014, is that correct?

Mel Poulton – 2014 Nuffield Scholar, farmer, Special Agricultural Trade Envoy.
Correct.

BG: I understand you did your Nuffield Scholar Report on agricultural IP and how to best send it out into the world and also get the best value for it. Can you tell us a little bit about what you found out?

The untapped potential of New Zealand’s agricultural IP.

MP: At the time, as a food producer and somebody who, through our levies was investing in New Zealand science, research, and development for New Zealand farming to give us a competitive edge in the world, it was a concern to me to hear that our IP was being effectively given away in the hope of an FTA for market access. That was how I was certainly interpreting it at the time.

I spent a bit of time traveling to different nations around the world looking at IP trade, market access, and looking at what went well and what didn’t, what could we learn from that, and is this even a good idea for New Zealand? I came back with the conclusion that actually, given who we are and what we do and our constraints, leveraging our IP is a really good strategy for New Zealand.

But I wasn’t convinced that we were doing it well, and I felt like we needed to better value or recognise our IP, value our IP, package our IP, and then be able to leverage value from it, not just by way of the hope of market access through an FTA, because we’ve seen in recent years what can happen with economic coercion and suddenly markets being closed to us.

Food and Fibre’s intellectual property opportunity.

So, if you end up giving away your IP and then those markets close, what have you got left? Some people might disagree, but I think that’s a relevant concern that New Zealand needs to be really mindful of with regard to its strategy and how it navigates its way in the world and how it leverages its IP.

How do we do it in such a way that those that have invested in that IP can extract value from it, short, medium, and long term, for the good of New Zealand and for the good of our Food and Fibre Sector and our people who have invested.

BG: A better strategy needed on the intellectual property front. Very good. Now, of course, you’re just finishing up a term as the Special Agricultural Trade Envoy (SATE), which means in terms of market access and trade deals and the world food system, you’d have widened your scope on things to more than just intellectual property, to food itself. But are there similar themes at play there as we try and extract value from our agricultural sector.

MP: There’s an enormous amount of opportunity for us to extract value from our IP in ways that we haven’t really considered before, or broadening it a whole lot more than what we do. Thinking about that in the context of a growing global population with a real concern around food security and even more importantly, nutrition security.

Then given the challenges of climate change and the environment and the constraints that’s putting on food production in different parts of the world, I feel confident given what I’ve seen in recent years and the travels that I’ve done both on my Nuffield Scholarship and since then as SATE for New Zealand. I think there’s an enormous opportunity for food production to increase in many parts of the world and especially those countries with developing agriculture. I think there could be small changes made that generate big gains.

Working together with developing agricultural nations for mutual benefit.

Some of these countries with developing agriculture have potential to really lift production. Whereas New Zealand and parts of Europe, for example, feeling more and more constrained as to how much more food production they can actually lift.

The talk is that New Zealand feeds 40 million people. Well, that’s barely feeding one city. Mexico City itself is 40 million people. When you think about the scheme of things in our place in the world, how do we strategically position ourselves to be good in the world and good for the world and continue with a transaction strategy that grows really awesome food and beverages that are highly nutritious and safe?

And also has the integrity behind it with regard to environment and climate and all the other factors around labour and all of the environmental, social, and economic factors that make up the back story to our product.

So we’ve got to be able to have that integrity, but also recognise what our potential for lifting things further for New Zealand. How do we leverage off the strengths that we have as a nation? I think there’s huge potential to be able to work with, learn together with, and build together with, other countries with developing agriculture and leveraging our IP, but not selling it as it is, but leveraging it and adapting it to create something new.

BG: So, it’s far more than just selling a product or an idea and leaving it at that. It is working with the people on the other end of the transaction long term.

A shift to transformation before transaction.

MP: Well, it’s effectively transformation before transaction. If you were to put value on or weighting on it, historically, we’ve had a transaction approach to things. I think there’s still a future for us in that because we grow and sell food to the market – that earns us revenue. I think it’s going to be for the growing needs of New Zealand and the economic growing needs of New Zealand, that we need to figure out how we grow further.

If we’ve got constraints here, then how do we grow together with others being good for the world and good in the world? It’s actually going in there with humility and saying, well, we’ve learned some stuff in our context, we recognise that you’re operating in a different context, we understand you’ve got goals and vision for growth for yourselves, so how can we work together, learning from our IP and a principles approach, to develop something entirely new that could actually help you achieve your goals and help us achieve our goals.

BG: That makes sense. In a finite environment, if one sector has reached their limit, then the only logical place to go is to help others up their production to a level where they can sustain themselves better.

Further trade ties with India and the role of humility.

MP: I was just in India a short while ago, and they really want us to be investing there. The challenge for New Zealand is that we’ve got stories, we’ve got examples, we’ve got experience investing in other countries. Some of the challenge around that is sometimes we’ve gone in a little bit proud and arrogant, taking a copy and paste approach that hasn’t necessarily worked because you’re operating in a completely different system, a completely different environment, and operating context.

Copy and paste won’t work. It won’t work in many countries because New Zealand is unique in that it is an island nation, small, tight-knit ecosystem, driven by a temperate maritime climate. Just copying and pasting that, there’s very few places in the world you can do that in. That’s why we’ve got to shift our thinking to learning, growing and working together with others to create something entirely new that works in the operating context for them and also works for us.

BG: When you read about the possibilities of doing more trade with India, quite often the first thing you hear is, ‘yeah, but they won’t take our dairy products’. And so deal’s off the table. But I think what you’re saying might be that it’s a bit more nuanced than that, and there are things we can do and we should be doing?

MP: It’s most certainly more nuanced than that. I suppose my take home message from my time in India is – there’s a bunch – the first one is, we really do have to conduct ourselves with humility. I think from those that I engage with in India, they have an allergic reaction to anything remotely arrogant, remotely hinting of a colonialism approach. So, if we even begin to think that we can conduct our way without humility and without deep, deep respect and without a hunger to learn and understand and focus on building relationships, I think we’re going to go nowhere fast.

At the same time, they really do want to grow. They’re grappling with some big challenges, and they’ve got enormous potential to lift by doing small things really well. Talking to the Indian High Commissioner to New Zealand, they really do want us to be investing there.

But again, this is where we’ve got to be thinking about a broader picture than just a single process investment. We’ve actually got to be thinking about how do we grow the whole ecosystem. It’s government to government, industry to industry, farmer to farmer, company to company, people to people.

It’s building all of the ecosystem that is an Indian centric one, or whatever country it might be in the world, something that really works so that whatever investment we do there, it’s going to be successful. But we can be guaranteed it’s not going to be a copy and paste of what we see here in New Zealand. We have to completely shift our thinking altogether.

BG: Now, I mean, our food production ecosystem here in New Zealand is pretty well developed and pretty really well thought of, do you think it’s well placed to meet some of these global challenges?

The value of New Zealand’s Food and Fibre ecosystem and its people.

MP: I have no doubt in my mind that one of our greatest strengths and most undervalued strengths is our ecosystem. By that, I mean all of the folks that are working for New Zealand and in New Zealand companies and the Food and Fibre Sector offshore, including our diplomatic teams. I think we’ve got amazing people in the MFAT and MPI and different government ministries who are working hard for the success of our sector offshore when they’re engaging on the certification and standards and all sorts of things.

We’ve got great people across our sector, good organisations who are absolute experts in doing things that food producers wouldn’t even dream of doing. These people are technically competent, highly skilled, and very effective at their job. Then we have all the folks working in our industry good organisations. You’ve got all the processors, exporters, packers, all exceptionally good at what they do for our sector. Then we’ve got all of our service sector too. No farmer would be able to operate without our service sector.

Then underpinning the whole lot is the science, academia, and research that goes on, that’s delivered the knowledge over the years. We’ve got to keep investing in that science, research, and development because they underpin our success. Then without the food producers themselves who are innovative, creative, solutions focused, businesspeople who are juggling so many variables and navigating their businesses without subsidies, to generate revenue for New Zealand. It’s just an exceptional ecosystem that works together.

The ecosystem is tight, it’s well linked, and relative to similar ecosystems in other countries, New Zealand has something special where we can turn on a dime, we can make decisions, and we can react and can also pre-empt and get ourselves on the front foot to capture opportunities globally as well. I think that was most recently best demonstrated through COVID – just watching how the whole ecosystem came together to navigate it. I’m not saying it was easy. But relative to other countries, New Zealand navigated that well. Our sector navigated it well. There’s a lot we can be proud of about that.

Staying nimble, flexible, and adaptable in a fast-changing world.

BG: And as we know, there are a lot of other shocks around the world now that need to be navigated. So it looks like it’s all shoulders to the wheel again, isn’t it?

MP: It’s all on. What we’ve got to work hard to do is make sure the top two inches of our thinking and our head space is in the right place, make sure we’re positive, we’re constructive, we’re focused on the priorities, we’re rational and logical in the decision making that we’re doing. That we’re taking an integrated systems approach to it, and that we stay nimble, flexible, and adaptable.

Sometimes life happens where a shock is something you can bounce back from. Sometimes it’s a shock where things are forever changed and it’s never going to be the same again. That’s where we’ve got to have plasticity, where we’ve got to be able to be sure of our core values, who we are, what’s important, and be able to reshape ourselves to be optimally placed to navigate what’s in front of us.

A Food and Fibre Sector under the pump.

BG: So, Mel, we’ve been talking about big picture issues for global farming, how does that square with what New Zealand farmers are facing at the moment? How will that work for them?

MP: I suppose when we’re talking about a big picture strategy for New Zealand, we really need to be thinking about how we strategically position ourselves on the global stage in the long term in such a way that we try to deliver short-, medium-, and long-term return back to New Zealand. We’ve also got to acknowledge the fact that right now, there are many farmers, food producers, packers, exporters that are really under the pump big time right now, especially those that have been hit by the weather.

There are folks down in Ashburton and West Coast that are still recovering from the damage that they sustained in recent severe weather events. We’ve got to be mindful that people are under enormous environmental, social, and economic pressure right now.

We need to keep in mind that when we discuss these big picture strategies, we’ve got to be able to look after our people, look after our businesses, look after our environment with the here and now. And how we build the recovery to be able to be best positioned from a market facing point of view, but also just how do we find our place here in New Zealand in this new operating context we’re in at a domestic level, but also at an international level too.

There’s a lot of balls that we’re juggling and it’s complex. I suppose my point really is it’s all fine and well talking about big picture strategy, but we’ve got to look after the people and be acutely aware that we need to be able to get the support, the enabling infrastructure, the enabling business environment, and context to be able to help people recover and stand back up.

Remoulding and reshaping to fit a changed environment.

In some cases, that whole plasticity piece, we do have to remould and reshape, and that might look entirely different to what it was in the past. Because in some cases, with some life events it’s never going to be the same again.

So we need to be giving people scope and space to be able to remould, reshape and create something that is still true to its core values, but looking quite different because it’s in a different operating context – it can’t go back to what it was before.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders Podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGAMRDT and Food HQ, this podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Hamish Marr – Glyphosate, Nuffield, and cropping today.

Listen to "Hamish Marr - Glyphosate, Nuffield, and cropping today." on Spreaker.

Hamish Marr is a fifth generation mixed arable farmer from Methven, Canterbury. He received a Nuffield Scholarship in 2019, completing his research on the topic
Can we farm without glyphosate?

Hamish is Vice Chairman of the New Zealand Seed Authority and is involved in two groups at the foundation for Arable Research, the Research and Development Advisory Committee, and ARG – the Arable Research Group here in Mid-Canterbury.

Listen to Hamish’s podcast above or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

Welcome to the ‘Ideas that Grow’ podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. With me today is Hamish Marr. G’day, Hamish, how’s it going?

Hamish Marr – 2019 Nuffield Scholar and mixed arable farmer.
Good thanks, Bryan.

BG: And where are you calling from today?

HM: I’m calling from Methven, about an hour, southwest of Christchurch. Lovely winter’s day here.

BG: And you run a farming operation there?

One farm, five generations of farmers.

HM: Yes, we’ve got a 500-hectare mixed arable farm, 400 hectares of different cereal crops and small seed crops, and we have pasture enterprise on the side of that. So, we run dairy heifers twelve months of the year, and we have finishing lambs in the autumn and dairy cows in the winter.

BG: How’s the year been for you so far?

HM: Well, it’s been mixed. I mean, we had a tremendous harvest with great weather at harvest time and good yields across the board, and a pretty good autumn. So Canterbury is flush with feed this year as opposed to other seasons just gone.

BG: That’s good to hear. And have you been doing that for a while?

HM: Yes, our family has been on our place since 1873. I’m the fifth generation. If any of my children decide to carry on, they’ll be 6th generation. So, you were here for a wee while.

BG: It’s great to see a farm that’s handed down through the generations and is still thriving.

HM: Yeah. I mean, me personally, I did a BCom Ag in the late the late nineties. And then was a Field Officer for Ravensdown Fertiliser for four years and then came home to the farm in about 2005. So, I’ve been farming not quite 20 years now.

The Nuffield experience.

BG: You were a Nuffield Scholar a couple of years ago. How did you find that experience?

HM: Look, there’s probably not words that can describe it.

A once in a lifetime, life changing, very humbling, eye-opening, eye-watering year of my life. Looking at everything in food production, how we live, farming and politics and everything in one year, it was amazing. Fascinating. I think you ask every Nuffield Scholar; they would say the same thing – beyond their wildest dreams.

Glyphosate use in New Zealand.

BG: Now, your studies focused on the use of glyphosate, which is often a contentious issue in agriculture these days, isn’t it?

HM: Well, it’s very contentious, and that’s the reason why I chose it. I chose it because it was in the news a lot at the time, and there were rumours in New Zealand and certainly around the world, that it was going to be deregistered.

Our farming systems, certainly the farming systems in Canterbury here, and most of New Zealand, where the use of Roundup underpins how we do things and how we move between pastures and crops. If we took that away, it would completely change the way we do things. I wanted to understand how our production systems would look if we were to do away with it.

BG: Obviously, as part of your studies, you do a bit of travel abroad. What did you find out about how different nations use glyphosate around the world?

Glyphosate use overseas.

HM: I spent a year looking at farming systems all around the world, and I hate the term conventional farming, but I looked at conventional farming: organics, regen Ag and inverted commerce, rice farming, horticulture orchards, vegetable production, indoor animal agriculture, extensive and intensive farming all around the world.

There’s a whole lot of conclusions, and the first one is that everywhere you go around the world is different. New Zealand is unique in the way we do things. Unique in the fact that we’re dominated by animal agriculture.

Our animal agriculture is predominantly outside, so the animals go to the food, as opposed to many countries where the food goes to the animals. Because those countries are cutting and carrying feed to animals, their systems are predominantly arable based. By very nature of that, the usage of Roundup compared to what we do here in New Zealand is significantly higher.

We have a real point of difference in this country. If you think about the Roundup story in isolation, we don’t use a lot of it just because of the way our farming system is. And also, the fact that our farming systems are pasture based is, again, another point of difference compared to a lot of other places.

BG: Do you think it’s one of those situations which quite often comes up when global conversations around food production make their way to New Zealand, that we’re not really part of the mix because we have our own way of doing things?

Glyphosate application rates in NZ compared to abroad.

HM: Yes. Look, I visited a place in the UK, a large place, and this was a lightbulb visit for me. They reduced their glyphosate usage on this farm. Big place. When I say big, about 30,000 ha. They reduced their glyphosate usage by 90% simply by adding sheep into their farming mix. And I suddenly thought, well we’re already doing that in New Zealand. That’s standard practice.

So, when you look down into the numbers and the application rates on a total per hectare basis in this country, we’re so far down compared to a lot of other developed countries for that fact.

I also saw the impacts of the other extreme Roundup ready crops in the Northern Hemisphere, United States and Canada, where applications of four or five times a year are not uncommon. When you multiply that up by the millions of hectares involved, it’s easy to understand how Roundup is now in the food chain in a lot of those countries.

BG: Now, despite finding out about the issues with some of those Roundup ready crops and those problems that they can have in some parts of the world here in New Zealand, while we don’t have those, Roundup is still pretty important to some of our farming systems, isn’t it?

Glyphosate as a strategic farming tool.

HM: I think in that sense we are a real outlier. That starts from the simplest of things. We’re a small island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so we’ve got this lovely temperate maritime climate. A lot of our competitors are continental countries. So in its simplest form, their weather patterns are completely different. And the weather patterns dictate what you do.

The way people farm, say, in Europe, it’s evolved over 2000 years. Well, agriculture in this country, we’ve only been really at it for a couple of hundred years. We’re a very young country compared to a lot of other places. With that, when some of the things aren’t ingrained in us as a population of people.

BG: And then you have the flow on effects of tilling the soil, which has been found to be bad for soil loss and releases carbon.

HM: Yeah, all that stuff. The nuts and the bolts of it is that we can’t on a global scale or even a national scale, do away with that as a strategic tool. Because what it does in sort of broad-acre farming, and I term pastoral farming in this as well, is that it reduces the amount of time in between crops because it takes away the work that cultivation used to do prior to its use.

Prior to Roundup’s use the way to control weeds and to establish a new pasture or a new crop, it involved about six-months-worth of cultivation because it was the cultivation that killed the remnants of the pre pasture, as it were, or crop. Roundup does that in one application, and you can sow your next pasture or crop or whatever it is that day.

To go backwards, away from that, you think about take six months of production out and that has huge impacts. I’m not saying that’s true in every situation because it 100% isn’t true in every situation, but it is a reality in a lot of cases.

BG: How did the report received? Once it came out?

Taking the Nuffield research to the people.

HM: Well, I have done probably between 50 and 60 little talks around the country and town halls and to Lions clubs and to farm groups. I’ve been to two garden clubs. All sorts of different groups have been interested in what I have to say.

I think I just tell the story of exactly how farming systems work and how all these things that we do on farm work and why we do them. I found myself, in a lot of cases, having to compare farming to your vegetable garden and to think about a cropping farm as a vegetable garden, and your dairy farm or your sheep farm as your lawn. Your lawn stays down for infinitum, as does a lot of pasture. So, we don’t actually do anything to them.

Your vegetable garden, on the other hand, is being turned over all the time into something new. There’s a very clear rotation involved and all of those things I had to think about things a wee bit, but hopefully I got the story across.

BG: Now you’ve completed your report. What’s life been like for you since then? You back on the farm?

Nuffield, Kellogg and giving back to the Sector.

HM: I have been on the farm, and that keeps me very busy. But also, I am the Vice Chairman of the New Zealand Seed Authority. That’s an industry good group involved in setting policy within the certified seed industry. I sit on that board as a representative from the herbage seed subsection of Federated Farmers. We, as the name suggests, represent the farmers that grow herbage seeds: ryegrasses, clovers, cocksfoots, fescues, etc.

I’m involved in two groups at the foundation for Arable Research, the Research and Development Advisory Committee, and ARG – the Arable Research Group here in Mid-Canterbury. I’m on a couple of other things in our local town, so, no, I keep pretty busy, to be honest.

BG: They don’t call it rural leaders for nothing, I guess. Certainly sets you up to be one.

HM: Yeah, it’s a privilege. It’s a privilege to represent farmers on those things, and I do enjoy it.

Anyone involved in food production should consider a Kellogg or a Nuffield. It opens your eyes to so many other things and it challenges your perspective. I went away with these preconceived ideas about what we do and why we do it, and then went and looked at all these other things and came home with a completely different understanding and perspective of how things are done. Also, how things fit together and what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong.

BG: Just before we wrap up Hamish, what are some of the issues you’re facing right now as an Arable farmer?

The main issues facing arable farmers.

HM: Well, that’s a great question, Bryan. I think the first one, and I think every arable farmer would agree with me on, is one of viability. I mentioned at the start we had a great harvest, and we did. But we face, like a lot of other farmers, increasing costs, and very static prices for our produce at the other end.

So, yes, our prices have increased a wee bit, but nowhere to the extent that our input costs have. And a lot of crops we grow now, we are barely breaking even when you consider our fixed costs of production.

We grow a lot of high value small seeds in this country for our own export, but also for domestic use. Our domestic production takes up about 20% of the total produced of the 80% that’s left.

Prices have really fallen away, and demand has fallen away over the last twelve months. To the extent that there is seed sheds full of seed that would have been exported, that is not going to be exported in the next twelve months.

Those supply chain issues will have effects on the ground for farmers, and there will be challenges with what arable farmers do produce on their farms in the next twelve months, two years, three years, because these things take a little while to unwind.

“It’s not all beer and skittles out there.”

Options for cropping farmers in the next two years are going to be challenged by not only profitability, but actually by options as well. It’s not all beer and skittles out there.

It’s interesting, we had a wonderful harvest, as I said, but that wonderful harvest has filled up the stores in this country, and we’ve seen prices drop domestically for grain because of the surplus. So what’s good on one hand is not so good on the other. The industry has got its own challenges.

I would finish that by saying now, of course, that the world wants plant-based food, so the future variable farming I see is rosy. We just have to get there.

BG: Hopefully just a matter of waiting out this next couple of years and you can thrive after that.

HM: Yeah, that’s it.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas That Grow, a Rural Leaders Podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGAMRDT and Food HQ, this podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships or the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Ideas That Grow. Podcast: Lucie Douma – Data sharing to achieve data interoperability.

Listen to "Lucie Douma – Data sharing to achieve data interoperability" on Spreaker.

Bryan Gibson
Welcome to the Ideas that Grow podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. This week we are talking to Lucie Douma. G’day, how’s it going?

Lucie Douma
Hi, Bryan. I’m good, thank you. How are you?

BG: Good. Now, we’re together today to talk about your Nuffield Scholarship and your report. You’ve covered something that is a real big issue in New Zealand agriculture, I think, and that’s how we best utilise farm data. What got you into this topic?

Data Interoperability and why it’s useful.

LD: That’s a very good question. So there’s a lot of people actually working on data interoperability challenges at the moment. I mean, they don’t call it a wicked problem for nothing. I had also been involved in that in my time at the Ministry of Primary Industries, where I was looking after the data interoperability and governance work stream as part of the Agritech Industry Transformation Plan.

That was about four years ago and we’re still at the point that we’re having conversations about how to tackle this problem, because it’s a really difficult one.

So that’s what made me want to apply for a Nuffield Scholarship, that I could unpack the problem a bit more and see what was happening internationally and if we could learn anything from that and move from the talking to the action.

BG: Now, just to explain, data interoperability is lots of farm data is collected by lots of different people, but at the moment, lots of those data sets don’t talk to one another, so you’re not necessarily getting the best out of them. Is that kind of how it works?

LD: Yes, that’s correct. That’s how I’ve been looking at it. So you’re correct that there is a lot of different data points and data collected from different organisations. Farmers can access that data, but it’s all siloed. It is independent systems and then farmers and growers are required to actually do their own calculations and then find out what some of those relationships are between the different data points.

So what we want to achieve from data interoperability is to have data sets, and platforms, and systems that speak across each other so that you can see your farm or operation as one holistic approach. One holistic organisation.

The challenges to achieving shared data.

BG: What are the main stumbling blocks? Is it sovereignty? People like to think that the data is worth something and so they won’t share? Or are there other, more structural or technological issues?

LD: Yes, it’s actually not a technological issue. So technically, we’re at the point that we can do it. A lot of it comes down to the relationships. There’s also commercial challenges that we have to deal with because it’s commercially sensitive data, some of it. The sovereignty side is also a really big aspect.

It really comes to the relationships between companies, relationships between people and who has access to it, because data is seen as an asset and something that people own, and I think we need to get away from that. Like, data is something we can use. But it’s the information that you get out of it that’s the benefit of it, not the data itself.

BG: Yeah, I mean, it’s all very well thinking that data is worth something, but it’s only worth something to a farmer if it turns itself into lower costs or greater value or something like that.

LD: Yeah, exactly. You can make better decisions on farm, so it’s the information that you want.

Nuffield global travel, the engine for good research.

BG: Now, Nuffield Scholars do a bit of touring around the world and you did the same. What did you find out there in terms of other nations and their relationship to data sharing in the farming sector?

LD: I spent about four months overseas last year. I predominantly spent the time with farmers and growers and farming organisations, as well as support organisations overseas. I found out some really interesting aspects around how people were managing data. Then what we can learn for us here in New Zealand.

I also found what doesn’t work. I’ll tell you a story. I was over in Norway and I was looking at some of the aquaculture there for salmon. That’s quite a new industry. It’s very advanced and you need a lot of capital to start. So, I went over there thinking, oh well, they’ll have data interoperability sorted, so I’m sure we can learn a lot from them.

While I was talking to the people there, they actually had the same problem as almost everyone else, only at a company level. So every department had invested in their own system to look at fish housing and then there was like, fish production and things like that, but again, you had none of those systems talking to each other.

So that was really interesting that it actually didn’t matter what size the companies were, it was also that they still had the challenge of data interoperability, because, again, it comes back to the relationships and the way that that business is structured.

How the Australians are doing it.

So where I learned the most, and where my plan and way forward of looking at this differently came from, was in Australia. So I learned a lot from the Australians because they have spent a lot of time with data in the mining sector. The mining sector gets it and has done a good job of finding out that everything has to be very precise.

There’s a lot of investment when you’re looking for new mine and new minerals. They have worked out what data they want and how to collect that. Then the best way to present that so it’s consolidated. What they have done is they’ve got a data manager. The data manager actually works with the mine to find out what it is that they need. They have big data teams. Now, that’s not something you can apply directly to farming, but it is something we can learn from.

Data Managers may be an answer.

BG: You mentioned in your report, perhaps having a data manager as part of a wider farming business. How would that work do you think?

LD: Yes. That’s the way that I’ve looked at it. How could we do it differently, in that we aren’t asking farmers to be finance experts. They have an accountant for that. So why are we going around asking them to be the experts in their data with the technical expertise to work out what to do with these systems? They should have a data manager.

I went to Brisbane and spoke to Smithfield Cattle with cattle feedlots. They have their head office in Brisbane, then they have two feed blocks that are about 4 hours apart in two different directions. Those two feed lots are about 20,000 cattle per feedlot, 40,000 total.

The feedlots are managed and formed very differently. One of them is very organic, so they have quite a different structure to the one that’s very symmetrical. And so you can’t apply the same sorts of applications and way that you manage those feed lots.

They hired a data manager, and that data manager was responsible for working with the feedlot managers to find out what was actually going on in the feedlot. What their strategy was and then what information they need to make the best decisions on the feedlot to maximise production.

So, with the data manager, it was working really well. He knew exactly how the feedlots operated. He was spending a lot of time with the managers, and from a head office perspective, they were getting all of the information they needed from the two feedlots.

On the ground asking the people that know.

I also went out to the feedlot and asked the feedlot managers, hey, is this working for you? Because from the Brisbane perspective, head office is great. But does it work for you? The feedlot manager said that it was brilliant because they could get real time information and make decisions on the spot.

If something wasn’t working, they could call up Rowan, who’s the data manager, and actually say, this isn’t working, and they’ll get a response immediately rather than going through call centres and raising tickets and all those sorts of things. From that perspective, it worked really well.

A solution for smaller operations.

Now, that’s a large business. Not every farm here in New Zealand could do that – hire their own data manager. So that’s why I was looking at the accounting model in that we haven’t asked farmers to be finance experts. They have an accountant. That accountant looks after five or six different farms.

So why couldn’t we have that with the data space? That enables someone who can help with collecting information to then provide something useful back to farmers and growers for better decisions making.

They can also work with farmers to find out, well, this is your farm strategy, which the farmer or grower may have worked with their rural advisor on, then match that to a data strategy. Then do a data audit to find out what information and data is being collected now and what they may also need.

That information and that advice is independent because at the moment there are a lot of apps and tools that farmers and growers can use, but people are just selling it to them. There’s no reviewed independent advice on that.

I think the data manager role is a skill set that can be applied and I think would be really good for farmers and growers in the current time we are in – the information age. That’s how I see that working.

Getting the data farmers and growers need for the future.

BG: I mean, that sounds great. Apart from the fact you’re removing a large chunk of work that many farmers or many people in general are not wired to do, you get the benefits of having that data well utilised, don’t you?

LD: Yes, and someone independent that can really help you work out what you’re trying to achieve on the farm. Someone who can provide you with that advice, and the strategy, and the data tools you may need to actually enable that.

BG: And this would also feed into reporting in terms of, say, emission schemes and freshwater plans into your council, that sort of thing?

LD: Absolutely. Because what I envision is that with the data manager, they would be holding that data digitally in a data lake. I mean, this gets more into the technical space, but with that large data lake, you can then get permission and share to different people that may want that, whether it’s government, local government, central government, or your customers.

A food system hungry for data – as a requirement.

Also part of the reason I did this, is that with our customers and consumers, they’re hungry for data and information. They want more of this. They want to know how our farms operate. So we need to be in a position that we can share those stories and we can explain that to them. For that you need data.

BG: I think that is a message that is beginning to spread more widely amongst the primary industries here. Just how important it is to be transparent about the supply chain of New Zealand food products. That’s really something that’s only going to get more important, isn’t it?

LD: Absolutely. Last month, Nestle, which is one of Fonterra’s largest customers, released their roadmap for how they want to get to net zero. They want to achieve net zero by 2050 and they want to halve their emissions by 2030. Now, that’s only seven years away. That’s not far. And of their emissions profile, about 30% of their total emissions comes from the sourcing of dairy and livestock.

They’re really pushing for this, which means we need to then have the data to back up those claims that we’re making on farm and the emissions that we have so that Nestle can report it to their customers.

There’s going to be more demands for this across all of our customers because we have premium products. For us to maintain that premium market access, we have got to be one of these first movers in reporting our emissions and actually giving it to these companies that are wanting that.

BG: So having access to all this data can not only prove where we are now, but it can make sure we have the best strategy going forward to get to where we want to go in the future.

Data and trade.

LD: That would be right. It’s also around our free trade agreements because with us having that market access, because we’re an export country, right – most of our products and food is sent offshore.

In March, I was at the Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit and we had Vangelis Vitalis speaking to us. He is with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and he’s the chief negotiator on the EU Free Trade Agreement. Now, he was saying that when he was negotiating that agreement, they asked questions back of that agreement, and of the 20 questions, around 15 of them were around climate change and environmental aspects, and GHG emissions.

So if that’s the requirement, to even get into these markets, we need to be able to meet them and we need to have the data to back that up. I think just going back to where the data sits and where it belongs, I think farmers are best positioned to actually collect that and pull that together. So that’s why I was looking at this from a farmer-grower perspective – having them in the centre.

BG: So what are the next steps for you? Have you got plans to move on from what you’ve written in your report?

Turning interoperability talk into action.

LD: Yes. The next step, like I said in the beginning, I want to move to action. The report is still in writing, so we need to action some of this. I’m in the process of working through what some of the pilot projects could be, because we need to now prove if this can work or not, because it is looking at it differently. And, look, don’t get me wrong, once we go out there and we try some of this, there will definitely be challenges and things that we can work on.

I don’t think we should be afraid to fail. At least not fail, but the fast fails that you can learn from. So the next step will be piloting some of this out on farm with a group of farmers. Yeah, you’ll hear about that in the future. There’s a few things in the making at the moment.

BG: That sounds amazing. Have you always been a data geek or is it something you’ve embraced recently?

LD: This is more of a recent thing. I actually have no data background. I’m more in that system strategic base, so I don’t have any technical background. But it was a bit of a learning curve with this project where I had to work out exactly how this can happen, at least to a basic level, and then just work through the strategy and the structure of making this work at a relationship and system space. So no, I’m not a data expert! It’s been very interesting though.

BG: Well, we wish you all the best with it and no doubt we’ll check in in a while and see how you’re going.

LD: Thanks, Bryan. I look forward to reporting back on this in the future.

Ideas that grow. Podcast: Getting Grounded in the Humanverse and the opportunity for New Zealand farmers.

Listen to "Devry Boughner Vorwerk | Getting Grounded in the Humanverse™ - the opportunity for New Zealand farmers." on Spreaker.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor, Farmers Weekly.

Welcome to the Ideas that Grow podcast. I’m Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly. With me today, I have the recent Keynote Speaker from the Rural Leaders Agribusiness Summit, Devry Boughner Vorwerk. G’day, Devry. How’s it going?

Devry: Oh, it’s going great, thank you. I wish I was still with you all in New Zealand. Hopefully you’ll invite me back.

Bryan: From what I can gather, I think we will. Now, obviously, you were one of the star attractions at the Summit. And it’s interesting because I was thinking anyone involved in New Zealand farming would perhaps think of it as being a bit of a challenging environment at the moment, but you really brought a sense of optimism to the Summit. Can you just outline what you spoke about?

Getting Grounded in the Humanverse^TM.

Devry: Sure. I’m glad that you mentioned the optimism, because that was my goal Bryan. I was trying not to ruffle feathers on any side, but really to put front and centre the opportunity, that is not unique just to New Zealand agriculture, but broadly what rural communities and farmers and industry worldwide are dealing with.

So the title of my speech was ‘Getting Grounded in the Humanverse. In terms of Ideas that Grow, I’m hoping that idea grows. I presented the audience with the opportunity to think about the pressures they’re facing as it relates to the constraints that industry has in terms of the need to reduce emissions, harmful emissions like CO2 or methane, or deal with the issues in the soil like nitrous oxide.

I presented an opportunity for the audience to think about that problem, or that challenge, by putting the people that are impacted, and the planet, at the centre of the conversation. Because a lot of the stressors I picked up on while I was there, have to deal with ‘how do we run a profitable industry’? We’re constantly being constrained by regulations and now we’ve got the emissions trading scheme at hand and we’re getting all these pressures from our customers, the government, and consumers.

Taking the longer term view.

So how do we maintain our profitability? The optimism was to take the longer term view, to put yourself in the middle of the Humanverse, which I just described as putting people and planet first. Think through the opportunities that come from that, and the profit will come as an outcome.

That sounds a bit sort of Pollyanna’ish, but it does allow those who are in the middle of it, farmers especially, who are facing the pressures, to start to think through the longer term strategy as opposed to the immediate pain that they’re feeling, or the immediate constraints.

Bryan: That is one of the challenges working in any business. You face those challenges. But in farming especially, it’s quite often difficult to see outside the fences of your farm. You’re just focused on paying the bills, getting the crop out, milking the cows and ticking all these other boxes – all the paperwork.

Making changes to your farming system that you can’t quite see the rationale for [can be difficult]. It is good to extend your horizon a little bit, isn’t it?

Moving farmers from price-takers to price-makers.

Devry: It certainly is. One thing we always talk about is, does the consumer want this? Because the consumer is expecting this. Then it goes all the way back down the chain to say, okay, well, fine. Then the branded products company turns to the processors, then the processors turn to the farmers at the end. It’s this pressure that’s on the farmers.

My message and my desire is for farmers to acknowledge that, yes, they’re a huge part of the solution here, but farmers are price-takers all the time. The optimism I’m trying to introduce into the conversation is, how do we collectively turn farmers into price-makers? Meaning you’re already facing these pressures. What is it that you can do standing in the middle of this moment, to start thinking through sort of the long term adaptation strategy that you need to put yourself on better footing?

I used a story, an example of a farmer that I had come across recently here in the United States, in Colorado, who was beginning to take over his farm – a third generation farmer. He stood in front of his dad and said, listen, I want to do this. But Dad, you’ve been working so hard for your whole career and you’re just breaking even. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to do this differently.

A farmer named Roy.

So, I told this story of this farmer, his name is Roy, and how Roy started to realise, well, gee, I need to be thinking differently. Diversification was a big thing, and quality of the soil too. So he started pulling in the data that his father had and started to look at his farm more holistically. How do I maximise the value of this land, by doing things differently?

He introduced some regenerative practices – which at the end of the day I used to work in a very large scale food and agriculture company, and the conversation was always, you can’t scale that, you can’t scale that. What Roy was proving is, look, by drawing down expensive inputs and starting to work on some new practices, he could do it. Now he’s building toolkits for others. So my message to the New Zealand industry was look beyond the boundaries of your farm.

Work with others. Figure out where New Zealand as a whole has an advantage and talk about how you can begin to adapt some of your practices so you can put yourself in the position of being a price-maker, not a price-taker over time. Some of that it’s complicated because it also involves engaging the government, and the government having realistic expectations on farmers as well.

Bryan: That’s a great story. I mean, that’s quite often the pushback we get here when we talk about these things – that you can get added value through adopting some of these practices on a smaller scale. But how do you apply that to the whole of the industry? I mean, you worked for Cargill for a long time, one of the biggest red meat companies in the world. What would their strategy to this be and how would someone of that size move the dial in this direction?

Scaling up change faster by starting small.

Devry: Yeah, I mean, it is interesting because I was one of the maybe top twelve or thirteen leaders of the company before I left. Some people say, you had such a large platform and you could scale it, so why go out on your own? I just thought, well, because over the 15 years I was there, I and the team that was part of this took the company on a very integrated external stakeholder strategy that did involve consumers, it did involve NGOs, it did involve the government.

We’re talking really big issues that have to be resolved in the supply chain, everything from deforestation to child labour issues in Cocoa, over the time I was there. Imagine taking that across 70 countries. You’re invested in multiple business units and say, how do you do this? How do you steer the ship in the right direction? So Cargill wasn’t the only one going through it. All of the companies were going through it. I could see the pressure coming on the medium and the small enterprises, like the small farmers or the medium sized farmers and other small manufacturers.

There’s a whole market in this. The business that I run is we don’t have time to waste with these very expensive consulting firms coming in with these very expensive and long plans that only get a portion of the problem, or don’t even get a portion of the problem. I decided, look, we can scale the change much more swiftly by coming up with a process to work with small and medium enterprises.

I also work with large companies, but there’s too much pressure at the beginning of the supply chain to expect everyone to adapt so swiftly without having the tools to do it. That’s why I stepped out of a large scale situation and said, we’ve got to move faster and we do have to provide tools to others in the supply chain. You can’t just turn to them and say, you pay all the cost. The farmers can’t pay the whole cost here.

Like I said, I knew once I got there what the national debate was, and there’s a very real fear about farmers saying, am I going to be able to stay in business? And Bryan, I was talking to my husband last night because he’s getting ready to inherit his father’s farm at some point in North Dakota, and I was thinking, all right, what are we going to do?

We’re like Roy. We’re like the New Zealand farmers. We’re standing there saying, how are we going to honour my father in law’s legacy, his father’s legacy, maintain the farm, because he wants to keep it in the family and make sure that we don’t go bankrupt in the process.

So, there’s a real opportunity to do this grand pivot around, restoring the soil, getting more out of it, drawing down the inputs. The biologicals that are going to be on the market at some point will be, of course, more environmentally friendly. We have to walk both paths at the same time. Not just completely draw back on fertiliser and pesticides, but draw those down so that we can scale up the more environmentally friendly and restorative practices, for sure.

Real change requires leadership intent.

Bryan: In a story we published, you had a chat with our reporter Craig Page. You mentioned that leadership was vital for this evolution and that you need strong leaders to lead this change and that sometimes the big companies were not actually set up to do this. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Devry: I always say, companies are actually not set up to succeed on sustainability, you can call it ESG. [At the Summit] I also introduced the ESG framework, by the way, Bryan, and it seems like it’s a bad word out there, but I demystified it a bit.

Companies aren’t set up to succeed unless they have leadership intent. If you can check the box and say, yes, the leaders want to move in this direction, that’s great. But taking leadership intent and getting that all the way out the door in terms of action, is incredibly difficult because organisations aren’t necessarily set up.

How do you cross across business units and functions to make sure that they’ve got a collaborative environment on ESG and sustainability? Culture is a big one. Is their culture one that adapts to change quickly? Or is it one that says, we won’t even be the fast follower, we’ll just wait till everybody else does it and goes through with it? Bonus structures, short term profit and loss versus long term investment strategies. Companies are not set up to succeed. So unless they are intentional and they acknowledge that by putting people and planet at the centre of their business strategy is actually going to mean they actually have to disrupt themselves. If they’re not ready for that disruption, they will fail.

It just takes real deliberate effort and action. And it’s not just in one time frame. I mean, say you have a CEO and a leadership team that says, yeah, we’re going to do this well, people change, new leaders come in. Have they built that into the succession plan and sort of the long term investment strategies, the long term production strategies or processing strategies? It just takes continuous improvement and continuous attention for companies to do it and do it well.

New Zealand Food and Fibre – and positioning for opportunity.

Bryan: You mentioned what phase of the evolution a company chooses to be in. A lot of people in New Zealand think that our plan to price emissions is one of, if not the first in the world. Why are we doing this? We should wait and see what happens because we might get it wrong or we might overburden farmers or the industry for no reason. Having said that, we are kind of best placed to do it because we’re already in a pretty good position. What would you say to the New Zealand industry in that regard?

Devry: Well, what I did say on stage [at the Summit] is that they will be locked out of export markets if the government doesn’t push them outside of their comfort zone and begin to position New Zealand broadly as a leader on carbon-reduced exports.

I cited what was happening in the European Commission as it relates to their movement and the conversation or the negotiation that goes on between the US Trade Representative and the Commission, where they’ve said, by 2024 we’re going to come up with an agreement on what the trade standards look like. What the border standards look like – called carbon border adjustments, which would be like a tariff or a tax at the border based on how much carbon you emitted in the whole lifecycle of the product.

New Zealand as the incubator of sustainably branded products.

So, I see it is painful. New Zealand is positioning itself to actually be what I said is like the incubator of sustainably branded products. I mean, the New Zealand brand is so strong. So, to show that New Zealand industry is actually leading on this is going to position the industry really well, especially in the markets where the segmentation is such that the consumers are willing to pay for the European and the US market.

While it’s painful right now, I see it as an opportunity. I’ve worked with New Zealand for years as it related to the implementation of the Uruguay Round Agreement and the WTO. New Zealand made some painful decisions like removing subsidies, trade distorting and production distorting subsidies, committing to Indian export subsidies, transforming its state owned enterprises. So when you go back and look at the environment back then, there were protests and it was difficult, but the country made it through.

I’m obviously not a Kiwi, but I’m citing what I have seen of New Zealand in the international marketplace, one of being flexible, adaptable and willing to make the tough changes that they need to make, even if it means that New Zealanders have to compete even more. Because the longer term view is if you’ve got competition on these things, then let it play out in the marketplace. That’s where I think New Zealand is really well positioned. I walked them all through a very simple model on how to get in the right sort of mindset to go through this change.

The truth model – as presented at the Rural Leaders Summit.

I called it the truth model, which is, it’s important when all this pressure is coming at you, whether you’re running a business or farm or a household, that when you’re being pressured with external information that your body is physically resisting this. No, I’m not going to change that. So, you actually have to face the truth.

You have to seek the truth first. Seek the truth. Is there an element of truth in what is being sort of put out there and put in front of me? And if the answer is yes, which is the climate imperative is the truth here, but then once they seek that truth, they move into, okay, how do I face that truth? Because now I actually have to acknowledge that agriculture is part of the problem, but it can be part of the solution. And after facing the truth, walk yourself toward following the truth.

That’s where the creativity can come in. Get in a room with a whiteboard and start coming up with new ideas on how you’re going to adapt. That’s where new revenue streams can come in, new business ideas. Then the last one, after you seek, face, follow, you share the truth. You tell people what you’re doing. One, so you can have collaborative partnerships with others and they can be inspired by the change you’re going through. Two, so that consumers know what you’re doing, government knows what you’re doing. So – seek, face, follow, share. A very simple adaptation model that I walked the audience through.

Bryan: Awesome. Now, given your past experience in both working with and observing what’s happening here, and having been at the Summit and hanging out basically with New Zealand farmers, New Zealand agribusiness leaders, do you think we’re up for it?

Is New Zealand Food and Fibre up for the change?

Devry: Well, for those that are listening, I would ask them that question. Do you think you’re up for it? I hope the answer is yes. And what Roy, this farmer, said to me when I was telling the story, he said, hey, Devry, farmers can endure a lot of pain. Once they’re at the point of real pain, that’s when the change takes place.

I want to acknowledge that it’s hard, but yes, I think they’re up for it. Absolutely. I also mentioned that I haven’t met a Kiwi that wasn’t willing to sit down with me and solve a really difficult problem and take me from A all the way to Z – and back.

The creative problem solving that I’ve observed in your culture. The desire to compete and win, the innovation that I see present there. I just want to applaud Rural Leaders for having this conference and putting it all out there because this is a really important and pivotal moment for each individual industry within New Zealand [Food and Fibre]. But also, can you imagine if the entire industry came together and said, we will be the premier supplier, New Zealand, of sustainable, regenerative, carbon neutral food and Ag products?

If they set a goal collectively and started to work themselves toward that, imagine how energising that could be, as opposed to all of the friction that comes from working against each other.

I’m going to bet on New Zealand every time.

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