The United Kingdom recognises what an important sector agriculture is for NZ and Fieldays is the place to engage with that sector and build contacts and understanding.
“We are, as we leave the European Union, looking at how we expand our trading relationships around the world and part of that is a lot of importance we’re putting on a potential future free-trade agreement with NZ.
“Food security is a big focus for our government at the moment and for many of these organisations who’ve come out.
“We know that by 2050 the world is going to need to produce 60% more food than it does at the moment and the UK is really at the cutting edge of trying to work out what are the technological solutions that we can bring to address that problem.”
The UK government has put £90 million into research to address food security there.
“And we recognise that there’s huge opportunity for NZ and the UK to work together on that,” Smith said.
And despite the Brexit process still playing out the focus on food won’t change.
“The fundamentals of the challenges aren’t going to change and I also think it’s very unlikely that any future prime minister or any government would change the level of priority that we’re putting on this area.
“We know it’s an issue we need to address so we’re not going to hit the pause button while we sort out Brexit. We’re ploughing on with solving the issues that we need to solve.”
Smith said 11 agritech companies and research institutes are here to take advantage of Fieldays and look at some of the big opportunities in the agritech sphere for UK/NZ collaboration.
