Simon Cook went looking for examples of farm-gate biosecurity done well. He came back with the opposite conclusion: it barely exists anywhere, and that gap is precisely what New Zealand needs to close.

Simon’s interest started 500 metres from ground zero. When PSA tore through New Zealand’s kiwifruit industry in 2010, the bacterial incursion wiped out the dominant gold cultivar. His own orchard sat metres from where the disease was first identified. Simon — a kiwifruit grower, contractor and Kiwifruit Vine Health director — wanted to study how other industries protected themselves. Across 20 countries in 20 weeks, almost no farmers were doing biosecurity until an incursion had already established. In one stretch, he flew from a Qatar farm (Qatar being a foot-and-mouth country) directly to a French dairy farm with no inspection, no questions.

The pattern repeated. In Florida he toured vacant lots that had been citrus groves before citrus greening cut the industry in half. In Chile he watched growers a few hours from a Brown Marmorated Stink Bug incursion show no concern. In Queensland he saw banana growers who had watched TR4 wipe out Darwin’s industry, then waited until the disease arrived on their own doorstep before acting.

The exception came late in the trip: a Queensland banana grower facing TR4. “Biosecurity wasn’t about the things you do, the procedures, the footbaths,” Simon recalls him saying. “Biosecurity is about culture. It’s about creating a culture that encourages everyone to accept responsibility for their own biosecurity.”

That reframe shaped Simon’s conclusion. Farmers acting alone won’t drive the shift. The levers have to come from industry bodies and commercial buyers — milk processors, freezing works, certification schemes — making biosecurity plans a mandatory condition of doing business, just as occurred with health and safety in the 1990s.