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Opinion: An orphan lamb in a banana box has got Manawatu farmer Pete Fitz-Herbert ruminating on how the food production expectations of some consumers (and governments) is getting a little out of hand.
In front of my fireplace sits a new lamb in a box.
This lamb is no more special than any other of the 3000 born on my farm this year, it just had a rough start and my day intersected with its needing help.
With a bit of attention, it will grow and one day end up in different boxes heading in different directions around the world.
Not as a tourist but as an export commodity.
The box it currently sits in, is one that brought bananas to New Zealand from Ecuador, which leads me into the guts of my yarn.
What's in the box? What do consumers think is in the box? Do they really care?
The banana box doesn't say much other than "Product of Ecuador."
And for me the bananas were exactly as I expected.
Food.
I like to think I know a bit about food – I've been eating it all my life and need to, in order to sustain said life.
Every producer is a consumer, but not every consumer has any comprehension of production.
And the expectations of some consumers (and governments) is well getting a little out of hand.
The safe food supply chain is now not enough.
The food inside the box seems less important than the different environmental, ethical and feel-good ideas smothering the outside of our food as packaging or marketing.
All these claims and ideas come with extra costs and compliance issues.
We keep getting told we trade based on our clean green image as a country and that this is more important than the actual product…but I'm pretty sure, we happily buy Ecuadorian bananas despite your average New Zealander knowing next to nothing about the place.
I on the other hand, once ran up three flights of stairs as an experiment in the Ecuadorian capital Quito and nearly passed out. Fun fact, Quito is nearly 3km above sea level and a lack of oxygen at altitude is an interesting thing for the body.
But I digress; back to the yarn.
We just want bananas in the same way 40 million people around here world just want our lamb, beef and dairy.
But here we are cutting back on production, as we make space in the country and the box to fit the carbon credits, the cup of kindness and novelty can of export quality fresh air and bottled water.
We are a country that sells stuff to pay our way in the world.
Currently we feed the world for next to record returns while more glamourised industries such as Tourism struggle to pump out golden eggs. And that goose might not feed many when it comes out of the Covid oven.
I'm also not sure of the nutritional value of carbon credits but I imagine it's a bit less than Kale.
If we are to attach ideas to our products that we sell, let it be known that if the world receives the box of lamb that came from my farm it has been cared for.
Not necessarily with the cuddles, but with the necessities of life.
It's gluten free, nuclear free, genetic modification free. It's more free range than your average human and its diet is grass, so it must be plant based.
You may notice some of the above claims have no place on a leg of lamb, but you'd be surprised what is demanded by consumer focus groups and government boffins that learnt about farming from cartoons.
My product comes off a conventional farm, because we have to be labelled by those that want to differentiate themselves as organic, biodynamic, regenerative or whatever someone else thinks can be the newest buzz word that produces less food with no nutritional advantage.
It doesn't add value, it removes value from others.
By the time the latest fad has actually been defined and an assurance system put in place, it will be already being replaced by another wholesome but hard to define and implement term.
So back to the lamb.
He has no name, he's been moved to the paddock with 35 other orphans and that repurposed banana box has been used to light the fire ready for the next lamb with a chill – much in the same way that yesterday's newsprint becomes tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper.
If only social media posts and propaganda could be reused in the same way.
Ruminate on that!
- Pete Fitz-Herbert is a Manawatu farmer and former finalist in the FMG Young Farmer of the year contest.