We waste much of the food we grow because collecting it is uneconomic. Changing grower economics could make this food available to consumers. Photo / Supplied
OPINION:
Using our traditional lens on the performance of the food system, the 2021/22 year has been the best year ever. Despite labour shortages, weather volatility and fragile global supply chains, export revenues for the year hit a record $53.3 billion with solid performances from many of New Zealand's key agri-food sectors.
There is an alternative perspective on our food system's performance over the last year, which is being lived by millions of New Zealanders. Higher food prices, more supply shortfalls, further food insecurity, and a collection of outcomes suggest anything but the best year ever.
The obvious question is how the food system delivered its best and, arguably, worst years in the same year. This juxtaposition has got me thinking over the last few months, and my view that our food system in New Zealand effectively functions through two distinctly different structures is increasing.
One system is configured to deliver high-quality food to the world efficiently and increasingly sustainably. Food which, consequently, the world is prepared to pay a premium for. The second system supplies the domestic market. However, this system lacks scale, struggles to pay export prices and presents local customers with a mix of food of variable affordability from local and overseas suppliers, some of which is produced to lower environmental and animal welfare standards than we set for ourselves.
In reaching this view, I recognise that the systems do not exist in isolation from each other. Most notably, they are inextricably linked to Aotearoa, New Zealand, our country, its environment, its people, and the outcomes we achieve as a society. Consequently, when our domestic food system leaves one million people living in food insecurity and many more dealing with the symptoms of diet-related diseases, like obesity and diabetes, this becomes part of our national story. Ultimately it will make it harder to sell premium food to the world based on a story that our food is healthy, sustainable, and safe.
The implication of this is obvious.
We have reached a place that is unsustainable for all New Zealanders. We need different thinking to enable our food system to operate as a single, integrated system that feeds every person in a way that preserves their mana while also continuing to supply premium food to the world, backed by a substantive story about the sustainability and health properties inherent in our food.
Many hold farmers and growers, food processors and retailers accountable for our food insecurity. They argue that the commercial sector has prioritised economic returns over societal food outcomes.
This ignores that food insecurity is an outcome of the broad ignorance our society has had of the critical role that food plays in securing the health of our people, communities, environment, and economy over many decades. Access and affordability issues have undoubtedly contributed to food insecurity but so has a lack of nutrition education, poor understanding of how food influences health outcomes, income levels and taxes, housing costs, cultural and community practices, and the unwillingness of successive governments to develop a food strategy.
The fact that we generate so much of our export income from selling biological products to the world makes our food system more challenging to balance than other developed countries.
Unlike many nations, we have not implemented a cohesive national food strategy. We have largely continued to operate the food system from the silos that we feel comfortable in.
While no work is underway to develop a national food strategy, it is exciting that participants across the food system are making much greater efforts to connect and collaborate with organisations that have traditionally sat outside their silos.
This creates the opportunity to design new business models that could transform our food outcomes.
The transformational initiatives should aspire to make people truly food secure.
This means moving beyond the amazing work community organisations continue to do to respond to food insecurity to establish resilient, financially sustainable channels that give every New Zealander the ability to access the food they need at prices they can afford and in a way that protects, and preferably enhances, their mana. What sort of initiatives might move us forward?
We waste much of the food we grow because collecting it is uneconomic. Changing grower economics could make this food available to consumers. This needs a contracting model that gives the grower certainty that their costs will be met for marginal products, enabling them to plan to deliver this food to the domestic market from the start of the season.
Seasonal food production results in availability and pricing varying across the year.
Historically we preserved food to ensure supplies lasted the year. We should be looking to use modern technologies, such as drying and dehydrating, to smooth supply peaks, capture nutrients and enhance supply resilience year-round.
Emerging technologies, like vertical farms and fermenting systems, reduce the seasonality of supply. They offer opportunities for iwi and community groups to invest in their future, secure food supplies and create revenue streams from selling any excess they grow.
Farmers take pride in the food they grow; however, they do not influence what happens to production beyond the farmgate. A scheme could provide farmers with a chance to opt to sell a small proportion of their output at a domestic market price, with the food being processed to support food security.
We also need to find ways to back local food initiatives by providing them with affordable access to agricultural supplies, more land and modern growing technologies that would enable more communities to grow and share more of their own food.
Addressing food insecurity requires secure funding. Feeding our community properly should not rely on charity. We should explore ring-fencing GST paid on food to fund food security initiatives in the same way that tax paid on fuel is directed towards transport.
This needs no change to the tax system, only a commitment to allocate the money to fund long-term contracting, investment in equipment and new farming technologies.
There are many initiatives already in place that could be expanded, particularly around waste recovery. Enhancing knowledge and skills around nutrition and cooking is critical, as is ensuring people that require assistance can access it in their communities in a manner they are comfortable using.
There is no silver bullet to fix food security; if there were, we would be doing it.
The change will take a generation. It will be driven by participants across the food system being prepared to connect, collaborate, and seek to do things differently to create more equitable, accessible, sustainable, and prosperous outcomes because they believe our food system can deliver more than it does today.
Later in the year, the Aotearoa Circle will release the outcomes from the Mana Kai Initiative — a project that has spent the last two years seeking to articulate the purpose and values of Aotearoa's food system, together with a vision for the future.
What is very clear from that work is that there is a role for everybody who wishes to contribute to ensuring that we feed our five million first.
The Survey once again places world-class biosecurity at the top place in the rankings followed by signing high-quality trade agreements and delivering broadband to all.
Other factors include: promoting careers to attract talent — fourth place: developing resilient supply chains (5), accelerating innovation partnerships (6), initiatives for a net zero carbon future (7), telling engaging provenance stories (8), improved immigration settings for skills (9) and building water storage infrastructure.
In the 12th year of the survey — with the world changing so rapidly — KPMG has taken the opportunity to update the priority statements in the survey to ensure they remain relevant to the world we live in today. The largest increases in priority scores can be seen above.
• Ian Proudfoot is the Global Head of Agribusiness for KPMG.
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