Kellogg Programme Reports

The New Zealand dairy industry has witnessed a steep growth in the number of workers from the Philippines (Southeast Asia) entering New Zealand to work on dairy farms. Like any dairy farm worker, there is an importance of keeping these migrant workers safe while working. However, with a different cultural background and a different understanding of health and safety, it can be challenging to build health and safety engagement on farm.

The aim of this report to gain insight into diversity on farmer elected boards and how the integration of independent directors has positively influenced board performance. This report investigates boards that have a high representation of farmers, to understand whether this dynamic allows best performance, against an increased ratio of independent directors influencing the board performance. The report also covers the pros and cons of the ward election system.

This report investigates the important metrics of maize forage quality and how they can be positively influenced. It also looks at how we could trade maize forage on quality parameters for the benefit of growers and purchasers.

It was the objective of this report to discover current on-farm waste and recycling volumes within the NZ dairy sector as well as what is being done about improving waste disposal. The report also sought to determine what is being developed for greater future farmer engagement as well as what is currently being achieved with the recycling that we are collecting from dairy farms.

The rising price of the Aotearoa New Zealand Carbon Units (NZUs) along with the lack of regulations around permanent exotic carbon forestry, have further contributed to planting more exotic forests on productive land. Previously the same land would have been too valuable to be considered for forestry.

Food science in New Zealand is an important contributor of the Science and Innovation ecosystem and helps maintain a positive international reputation in this field. However, international stakeholders are looking in, the food crisis accentuated by a growing population is worsening and scrutiny is increasing across every sector. Thus, our food science sector must show clear direction, collaboration, and thought leadership. Therefore, New Zealand’s science industry needs to be reshaped to help find solutions to the pending global food crisis identified by the United Nations and other organisations.

Under a changing climate our water security is under threat particularly for New Zealand’s rural communities. Our freshwater resource is at the heart of our prosperity and resilience of our communities. With increasing demand from all sectors, it is crucial that New Zealand efficiently manages our freshwater and that it is allocated to its best uses.

Agriculture is recommended to decrease land area and therefore emissions to help achieve New Zealand’s obligations (New Zealand Productivity Commission, 2018). Then, why is it that some agricultural land is then allowed to be subdivided and turned into housing which emits potentially more emissions?

The aim of this report is to understand how the New Zealand horticulture sector successfully navigated the unknown during the initial phase of the pandemic, specifically focussing on leadership. The question I wanted to answer was ‘what are the most effective leadership strategies during a crisis?’.

This whakataukī is about perseverance and endurance. Refusing to let obstacles get in your way while striving to reach your goals. This research paper looks at the need for women in leadership, the need for te ao Maori and tikanga Maori in the workplace, the current resistance to change and posits how this might change.

The aim of this report is to understand what motivates Generation Z in the workplace, identify their workplace expectations within an on-farm, processing/supply chain context and discover how to bridge the gap between their expectations, and the reality of a workplace within the red meat sector.

Alternative protein is not a new term and has not impacted the NZ primary industry in any major way so far. It would be easy to dismiss as a phenomenon that will happen elsewhere, that it won’t affect the pasture raised, free range, high quality products from New Zealand. Having researched this topic for a year, I do not believe this is the case – here’s why...

My aim for this project was to break down the barriers and help create an understanding of ‘‘Why do sales teams succeed or fail?’’ and how organizations can unearth problems and enable their teams to discover the solutions to high performance.

E-commerce is a fast-developing sales channel, on which the agricultural sector was a long way behind. This project looks at the growth/opportunities for e-commerce operations for agricultural supplies businesses. The willingness of farmers to use online stores to make farm input purchases is now very high (83.5% in favour of using e-commerce), and now many Agri supplies businesses are ready to offer this to their customers.

Many rural communities have lost their hospitals, police stations, banks, government departments, schools, sporting clubs and churches. This report explores whether healthcare, employment, crime and education outcomes have worsened for rural residents compared to their urban counterparts due to these changes, and recommends enhancements to public policy to address this.

The principle aim of this report is to identify the impact of the developing plant-based protein category on New Zealand red meat sales and investigate whether red meat protein has a positive outlook and if it can hold its position as the dominant source of protein on the supermarket shelves.

China is New Zealand’s largest export market for red meat by both volume and value. It is important that we demonstrate our commitment to the market by exploring and investing in our opportunities there.

Continual advancement of technology has created an excess number of data creation and management tools for use within agriculture. Multiple tools exist with similar purposes. Many of these are farm management tools or feed directly into the decisions associated with farm management. Reducing the number of new tools being created, would create for drive for information to be shared among the existing tools.

The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as reduce the loss of contaminants to water is going to be a major challenge for the farming sector in this country and difficult to achieve within complex farming systems. In response to these challenges many communities have founded catchment groups as a collective response to need provision on farm.

The New Zealand arable industry is faced with an ever-increasing problem of maintaining a competitive and profitable advantage, that still provides for its consumers. These challenges are compounded by increasing environmental compliance. Lean theory offers an ever-evolving group of practices, both theoretical and managerial, that create a problem-solving culture, that could help the New Zealand arable industry face these challenges.

For farmers to measure and manage their carbon footprints there must be a robust system in place to calculate not only their carbon dioxide emissions, but also their carbon dioxide sequestration potential. This research report will focus on answering the question of; what is the carbon sequestration potential of indigenous woody vegetation on New Zealand farmland and how can it be used to more accurately model on-farm carbon footprints?

This project discovered why some farmers still burn their plastic and investigated current waste recycling options for sheep and beef farmers. I sought to gain a deeper understanding of the mentality of farmers who burn or bury rubbish to help understand how their opinions could be swayed. The perception of farmers as kaitiaki could easily be undone by smoking piles of plastic or holes on farms full of plastic containers.

I investigated why catchment groups are formed, how they are formed and what they are producing. By gaining an understanding of the literature around resilience, social sense making, the social licence to farm and the legislative requirements on farmers. I aimed to seek any correlation between the above topics and catchment groups.

The objectives of this report were to investigate the bioavailability of protein and micronutrients from different protein sources, and to evaluate the suitability of plants source foods to provide adequate levels of protein and micronutrients to support optimal human health.