In a keynote address at the Blinc Innovation 2020 Agri Outlook workshop at Lincoln Kilsby cited coronavirus and its impact on China as the biggest disrupter.
“In 2020 so far we have had missiles in the Middle East, drought, fire, flooding, Trump acquitted of impeachment, Brexit happened and the coronavirus outbreak.
“That’s a busy start to the year and it’s been hectic.
“What we are seeing in a global economic sense and what we are seeing here in New Zealand and what that means for different farming sectors makes it hard to think about the big picture and address it in a global sense.”
Kilsby said 2020 was poised as a year where some improvement in global growth was expected following a slow year in 2019 when trade was subdued because of tensions between China and the United States.
“In 2019 global trade growth was only 1%. Expectation was that we would pick up this year in 2020 but that is now looking increasingly unlikely with some of the challenges we have got ahead.”
Trade implications and how disruptions will affect everyone until the end of the year are yet to be figured out.
“Meantime, we expect a lot of noise and disruptions.”
There’s a good chance the European Union and Britain will divorce.
“And for the rest of us I expect a lot of ups and downs as the year goes on.”
While phase one of the US-China trade deal has kicked in there’s still a lot unknown and it will take time to develop supply-chain relationships and determine just what impact they will have on NZ’s trade with China.
Meantime, the big unknown and the big risk is coronavirus.
“Coronavirus is the biggie right now and it’s creating huge disruptions for China.
“From a human perspective it’s devastating and from a trade perspective it’s the biggest challenge.
“Everything is sitting at a standstill and that has affected current and future demand for some of our products.
“The impact is still unknown but what we do know is we will definitely be back on trade and even before the virus in the week leading up to Christmas we were seeing a slow-up in beef, mutton and lamb from the increased demand throughout 2019 as a result of swine flu.
“China has been a massive market for mutton and pretty much soaked up all we had.
“It will be a week or two yet before we have a better sense of how quickly the situations is going to resolve.
“In terms of the year ahead we will be challenged but there will be opportunities for our primary sectors,” Kilsby said.
