Nuffield Scholarship Reports

New Zealand needs institutional reform—independent science, cost-sharing, sector-neutral regulation, and resourced catchment groups—to close the gap between its clean farming identity and reality.

New Zealand strong wool's profitability depends on aligning with international market expectations through credible certification, robust environmental data, and intentionally designed, transparent value chains.

Gene editing can boost NZ’s primary sector by improving sustainability, productivity, and resilience. Success requires balanced regulation, sector leadership, public trust, and coordinated innovation.

Peatlands store 20% of NZ’s soil carbon but are largely degraded. This report explores restoration, wetland farming, and Māori-led solutions for climate and cultural resilience.

Rising land prices and aging farmers threaten NZ farm succession. This report explores barriers and alternative ownership models to support the next generation of farmers.

New Zealand’s economy can’t rely indefinitely on agriculture and tourism. This report calls for a national conversation on future export strategies to ensure resilience.

This report aims to explore opportunities to enhance the beef on dairy value chain in New Zealand by increasing value, improving efficiency, and aligning production with consumer demands.

A reduction of Greenhouse gases is being demanded through our value chains. Farmers need to be at the table of change, not on the menu.

This report primarily addresses those in leadership, and to a lesser extent agricultural policy makers and others with an interest in how we move forward in delivering better outcomes for those on the land and the land itself.

The farming world is striving to feed an ever-increasing population from a declining land area whilst at the same time reducing its environmental footprint.

As an agricultural export dependent country, the New Zealand economy relies on its trading markets to return valuable revenue from the food the fibre sector. It is an opportune time for New Zealand to explore a replicable trade model, to extend trade into geographic regions through applying a gateway city model.

We are in the information age where access to and control of information is a defining characteristic of the current era. New Zealand’s agriculture sector is increasingly being asked to provide data and information to governments and consumers. We need to find a better way of collecting, managing, and using this information on our farms as part of the decision-making process and for this we need data interoperability and data sharing of systems.

Change is a certain component of the future of New Zealand agriculture, the opportunity is to make it a positive experience that applauds and embraces innovation and encourages personal stewardship while minimising regulation.

A fracturing social licence to farm. Recruitment. An authentic provenance story. These are our sector’s most entrenched challenges. At their roots, they are about culture, values and perception.

This paper initially set out to determine whether it was possible to better monetise sustainability with the New Zealand Deer Industry. In addition to this, I wanted to understand why NZ deer farmers seemed to achieve such poor returns in comparison to both the end value of their products, and the level of risk they accepted in producing them. And lastly, I wanted to know whether our conventional industry supply chains were going to be fit for purpose in a rapidly changing world.

Despite the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 and a focus on improving health and safety, the rates of fatality and harm in NZ agriculture remain stubbornly high. This has negative impacts on the sector’s productivity, profitability and sustainability. The consequences for farming families and communities are tragic.

The era of trade liberalisation and reform in the 1980’s and 1990’s left New Zealand (NZ) focusing on what it was good at – being efficient commodity producers, and NZ exploited its comparative advantages. This drive for efficiencies created the domestic agenda for science and innovation. For agriculture, to drive productivity gains, the focus was inside the farm gate.

Commodity prices received by New Zealand farmers are close to all-time highs, yet we are protesting in the streets for the first time in decades. Our resistance to environmental regulation has exposed a vulnerability – we, farmers, are struggling to hold our place in the power hierarchy.

There are multiple stakeholders with various views of the world and we currently have no clear framework to understand what is going on around us. A better understanding of how we need to adapt and organise ourselves, will better position leaders to make changes.

With a climate crisis, increasingly diversified agri-businesses, interest in regenerative agriculture and increasing membership of catchment groups, coupled with generational change and economic reform, now is the right time for structural change to New Zealand Agriculture.

The tension between science-led and consumer-led research and development is unavoidable. There is a need for both. Successful consumer-led innovation directly produces economic value. Science for the sake of obtaining knowledge leads indirectly to economic, social, and environmental benefits.

The future is positioning our produce in high end, affluent markets that demand, ethically and environmentally friendly products going away from volume favoured markets to values driven markets. This takes a mindset shift from farmers.