Nuffield Scholar and Ballance sustainability manager Rebecca Hyde spent her scholarship year unpicking the key differences between two words that are often interchanged but quite different in terms of how groups relate to each other when acting on issues like environmental protection.
Her study found ultimately the success of one over the other requires having the right people engaged in the collaborative process with respect, an ability to understand multiple viewpoints and the motivation to create and drive a movement.
It also requires strong facilitators to manage the inevitable differences in a group, having a clear, unbiased focus on what the ultimate outcome of the group’s purpose is.
For Hyde, the definition of collaboration involves a group working as a single, unified party towards a common goal, beyond the individual interests of the parties making up that group.
“When groups only co-operate they tend to retain their particular alliance to their sector or interest – as soon as you hear references like ‘this suits us’, you know it’s co-operating, not collaborating.”
Hyde’s prompt for the Nuffield study on effective collaboration for environmental gains came from her home farm experience with the Hurunui-Waiau Regional River Plan working group.
As a group no firm resolutions on the issues of water quality and use have yet been made despite running for over four years and her experience with it reinforced the need to ensure the right type of people are on such groups.
“We tend to run these sort of groups with an open invite for anyone to come along. But to work you need to first identify all the affected parties that should be collaborating then make sure you specify the people you want on board, with the right combination of influencers and information providers.
“An open invitation is an invitation to have people who will inevitably feel a strong alliance to one sector or one view and are unlikely to hold to that common vision, whether it is a cleaner river or improved lake water quality.
She laments the lack of a collaborative primary industry goal around environmental improvement in NZ despite large industry bodies like Beef + Lamb NZ and DairyNZ having their particular plans for sustainability and environmental protection.
Interestingly, she believes when left to their own devices farmers are quite capable of developing a collaborative plan with their community to achieve a certain goal.
“But then when the industry body steps in they will typically say ‘No, sorry, this does not work for our sector’.”
As a country rapidly approaching 90% urbanisation the need for sector collaboration is critical. Non-government groups are becoming increasingly capable and organised in opposing or disclaiming rural sector efforts in the environment.
“If we are not collaborating it is only easier for them to gain traction if we don’t have a united voice.”
She attributes part of the reason for the lack of collaboration to NZ’s culture of both co-operative farmer groups serving their particular members’ interests first and individual farmers being quite competitive in a less regulated, unsubsidised environment.
In her Nuffield travels Hyde saw a variety of truly collaborative primary sector groups that provided some ideas for similar structures at home.
In the United Kingdom the LEAF (Linking the Environment and Farming) group was born from a desire among farmers to show consumers what they are doing to protect their environment around a common vision for a world where we farm, live and eat sustainably.
Consistent messaging and leadership since forming in 1991 has had the group’s brand become a certification and used by Waitrose supermarkets on vegetables.
In Ontario the Grow Ontario Together group was formed, partly to deal with phosphate losses into Lake Erie. That study highlighted to Hyde how fortunate NZ is with a single-government, non-state system.
“For farmers somewhere like Ontario it was a challenge to see the outcome of your positive efforts when you are only one state of five.”
She did, however, see the value of having an effective facilitator in a group and the demands such a group put on someone in that role.
She was also impressed by Danish efforts to create an Agriculture and Food Council. Farmers pay into it, on top of their individual sector levies.
Spreading the industry’s human resources across all agri sectors had reduced the skills pressure in a country with a relatively small population of 5.7 million. It also helped change the perception of farming in Denmark. Consumers trust Danish brands and environmental issues are being front-footed before a largely urban population.
Like NZ, Denmark has a history of co-operative farming structures and the pooling of resources across the entire sector has delivered a truly collaborative approach to dealing with the sector’s challenges.
Hyde hopes her work will be noticed by the industry and acknowledges some of that attention might come from the sector recognising it is standing on a burning platform that will prompt change as farming’s social licence to operate continues to diminish here.
