Nuffield Scholarship Reports
Rachel Baker
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.
- February 2025
- Nuffield 2024
Jenna Smith
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.
- February 2025
- Nuffield 2024
Peter Templeton
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.
- February 2025
- Nuffield 2024
Carlos Bagrie
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.
- February 2025
- Nuffield 2024
Matt Iremonger
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.
- February 2024
- Nuffield 2023
Kylie Leonard
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.
- February 2024
- Nuffield 2023
Kerry Worsnop
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.
- February 2024
- Nuffield 2023
James Allen
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.
- April 2024
- Nuffield 2023
Anthony Taueki
In this report Anthony examines how Aotearoa's primary industries are transforming through technology and innovation, arguing that Industry, Iwi, Government, schools, and tertiary providers must collaborate to build adaptive vocational pathways that deliver meaningful careers and prosperous futures for all whānau and communities.
- 2023
- Nuffield 2022
Parmindar Singh
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.
- April 2023
- Nuffield 2022
Lucie Douma
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.
- April 2023
- Nuffield 2022
Edward Pinckney
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.
- March 2022
- Nuffield 2020
Daniel Eb
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.
- November 2022
- Nuffield 2021
Ben Anderson
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.
- June 2022
- Nuffield 2021
Lynsey Stratford
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.
- May 2022
- Nuffield 2021
John Foley
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.
- June 2022
- Nuffield 2021
David Eade
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.
- March 2022
- Nuffield 2021
Tracy Brown
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.
- April 2022
- Nuffield 2020
Phil Weir
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.
- March 2022
- Nuffield 2020
Shannon Harnett
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.
- February 2022
- Nuffield 2020
Ben Mclauchlan
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.
- March 2022
- Nuffield 2020
Ben Hancock
Rural Leadership – taming the wicked problems: Growing the toolbox to foster society’s trust through strategic solutions for allBy Ben Hancock https://vimeo.com/657583756 Ben Hancock – Scholar Presentation (June 2020) Societal and regulatory issues facing the agriculture have been escalating, and unrelenting – the demands on production and cost of food, society’s perceptions of agriculture, and … Read more
- March 2020
- Nuffield 2019
Corrigan Sowman
Corrigan Sowman – Scholar Presentation (May 2020) Across the world, pressure on our planet’s ecosystems is forcing society to “rethink” many of our everyday activities. Technology change is raising questions about where and how food can be produced, and the morality of food production. Agriculture is at a crossroads; past practices are no longer seen … Read more
- March 2020
- Nuffield 2019
Cameron Henderson
Cameron Henderson – Scholar presentation (May 2020) The New Zealand Net Zero Carbon Act’s main objective is that New Zealand contributes no further to global warming by 2050, a target commonly known as ‘Net Zero Carbon 2050’. To reach this vision, targets have been set for all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in New Zealand. Agriculture, … Read more
- February 2020
- Nuffield 2019