Friday, March 29, 2024

Constant change the arable norm

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Constant change will become the norm as the arable industry meets the growing demand for homegrown food, Arable Industry Food Council chairman Ivan Lawrie says. At a recent food hui organised by Eat New Zealand and attended by financiers, farmers, activists, chefs and tourism entrepreneurs Lawrie was surprised to hear of the relatively high volumes of organic flour being imported from Australia by top-end Auckland bakeries.
FAR chief executive Alison Stewart questions how to tell the arable farm story without a formal accreditation programme to back it up.
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He was equally pleased though at the amount of interest shown in sourcing locally produced grain.

The hui focused on an important global movement of consumers going back to basics, using local, sustainable and fairly produced food from animals and plants.

Many of the attendees had no idea most of NZ’s flour is made from imported wheat.

“This opens opportunities for growers, traders and millers and while this market space might still be considered niche it influences consumers through the strong media presence that chefs and restaurateurs have nowadays.

“Just as craft-brewed beers have made their way into supermarkets, specialty baking products are also becoming more common,” Lawrie said.

Countdown bakeries now use only NZ wheat and Breadcraft has this year moved in the same direction.

“Be prepared to make some changes to meet this growing demand,” Lawrie told farmers.

He described the hui as confronting, enlightening, empowering and thought-provoking with the conversations and connections made between ideas and people were amazing.

“There were certainly some radical points of view around how the global food industry should be changed to connect the producer with the consumer and while they were not all entirely practical there were some consistent themes.

“It is clear that people want to understand more about the food that reaches their table and this is especially important to our sector where our products mostly lose their identity and become ingredients of other food products.”

The hui was not interested in Impossible Burgers, synthetic foods or plant-based meats.

“Rather, attendees were interested in an important global movement of consumers going back to basics and wanting to eat the real thing.

“This means growers need to be ready to shift production quickly to meet demand.”

The industry has set itself the goal of returning to milling wheat self-sufficiency by 2025.

“It’s quite a lofty goal but before deregulation we were self-sufficient in milling wheat and we can do it again as long as we have the right infrastructure set up to do it efficiently.”

If all players in the game work together and the Government comes to the party a self-sufficient 2025 is possible, Lawrie said.

Growth will now be focused on growing milling grain in areas where it’s not normally grown including Wairarapa, Manawatu and Hawke’s Bay.

“Our work between now and 2025 is to ensure the varieties we are growing in those new regions and in these markets are meeting the needs of the baking industry.

“There will be some adaptation work to go on and we are working closely with millers and bakers to ensure we meet their needs,” Lawrie said.

Speaking at a 2020 Agri-Outlook workshop in Lincoln, Foundation for Arable Research chief executive Alison Stewart said constant change will become the norm in adding value to the business of cropping.

Despite a decline in production area over the past 20 years, a lot because of intensive dairy in Canterbury, productivity has continued to increase year on year.

But Stewart said that is now plateauing with environmental challenges putting the hand brake on driving production higher.

“Still we are doing 13 to 14 tonne to the hectare, Aussie is doing 3-4t/ha, so we are doing a really good job but we are a domestic commodity market so there’s not a lot of opportunity to enhance profitability.”

Plants for protein are the obvious with huge opportunities in the likes of plant-based milk, hemp products and seed crops such as sunflowers and the industry’s homegrown milling grain initiative.

“Our issue is our growers get more money to grow wheat to feed animals than they can to feed people – that’s a very sad situation.

“A major programme of work is to convince consumers that to go homegrown we need a 40 cents premium (on finished products) and even if just 8c goes to the grower it will double industry profitability overnight.

“I think we have to drive this challenge.”

Stewart said FAR is facilitating a project with high-end growers to empower other mainstream growers to take risks and drive into diversified systems where they can constantly evolve and improve.

“We need to look at the problem in a holistic manner and look at the stakeholders around us.

“The issue is risk and reward as we move from price takers to price makers.

“Be prepared to make investment into new initiatives,” Stewart said. 

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