Rural delivery: Strange days offer danger and reward

By JANET TYSON

White frost on windless Wellington roads. Mutton selling at prices that were a pipe dream for lamb just a few years ago.

Corporate New Zealand, so often held up to farmers as the model of business efficiency, proving itself incapable of scoping the cost of major purchases, managing forward cover for foreign exchange, or following even the laxest takeover rules.

The state sector showing a similar lack of basic boardroom skills, and seemingly getting its dress code from the Taleban.

Strange times we are living in, when the industry that made New Zealand's name internationally - apples - is on the brink of collapse.

When we have so few pig farmers that we import pork, prices for ham and bacon are going to go up so much that consumption patterns are likely to change completely - and there's talk of an export business. When Romneys can be rounded up by a handful of skilled dogs, but woolgrowers seem to resist being corralled into any collective strong marketing structure.

And when the people who are expert at managing cows to produce record quantities of milk are failing dismally to attract, manage and retain the human resource they need to ensure their industry's continuing growth.

I hope these weird and far-from-wonderful events might precipitate some thinking about what is really needed to forge into the future.

In particular, people-management skills. It seems a national characteristic to find it hard to make the transition from being rugged, self-sufficient, inventive individuals to participants in a large team operation.

We've also been reminded by the Christine Rankin case in the Employment Court how huge a gulf in perception there can be between two people, both doing their best according to their own beliefs, and how much you might learn from looking at a situation from someone else's perspective.

How many dairy farmers made sure their staff and business associates got a share, or some benefit, from this year's bonanza payout? How many sheep and beef farmers, with the prospect of yet another good year, are planning to do the same? How many have brought the team up to date on planning for future business development, so they can see the career structure that might unfold for them?

Pay and conditions that recognise people's changing personal needs are one aspect of a well-managed organisation. But some of the more subtle rewards go a lot further than the dollar in motivating people: recognising and encouraging initiative, facilitating self-improvement (even if it might mean that people move on to other employment), taking a wide view of what faces and skills might fit, and treasuring lateral thinkers even if they sometimes leave the lights on.

For these are the people who might pull the apple industry out of its doldrums. Maybe it is poised for the kind of rebirth that has led to dramatic rise in sheepmeat prices - a process, painful for many, that started when the rug of subsidies was pulled out from under producers' feet.

But the opportunities now being taken come to a slimmed-down industry which is trying very hard to shake off the commodity mindset.

And the new success stories might come from right outside the corporate model. Certainly, no farmer should ever again feel that alternative ways of doing things are in any way inferior or that someone whose face doesn't fit the perceived model has no place in creative developments.

One day we might see apples of guaranteed tang and crispness, packaged individually with a knife and hand towel for eating at the office desk, selling for the price of a pack of sushi.

With stern words being spoken about reducing fatty foods in our diet, and scant evidence of tasty, easy-to-prepare healthy alternatives, the fruit and vegetable sector has a huge challenge if it chooses to accept.

They say the Chinese word for crisis translates as dangerous opportunity.

* Janet Tyson is a freelance researcher, editor and writer specialising in agriculture.