That will be done by telling positive stories about the agri-food sector being the lifeblood of New Zealand, he wrote in the 2018 edition of the KPMG Agribusiness Agenda.
It is not only the social licence to operate under threat but how customers perceive our products compared to those of competitors.
But the positive stories can appear to be spin when a customer checks on Google and finds nothing but negative comments, leading to questions about integrity and provenance.
“The predominant narrative around the sector is costing farmers, growers, processors and their supply chain partners real money every single day,” Proudfoot said.
Consumers sit in the centre of a value web, receiving a great deal of information about products and their origin.
Any uncertainty about the sustainability, efficacy, safety or quality of one product in comparison with another makes the choice easier for consumers.
Consumers now want more than poetry in their story-telling.
They want verifiable attributes and every step in the supply chain has a potential input.
The cultivar or genetics, the soil in which a product is grown, the way water is used and the environment is treated can all be attributes.
The employees, the technology, the transport and the verification of the provenance are also attributes.
Truthful, verifiable stories must be told by industries, organisations and governments around the key environmental, social and economic issues facing the sector.
KPMG surveyed ordinary farmers and growers as well as sector leaders in the preparation of this year’s annual publication.
Associate director Julia Jones and director Brent Love, in the North and South Islands respectively, summarised the grassroots perspectives.
Finding the right technology for the job is a widespread concern, while needing to keep up with the fast-changing complexity of the industry but guarding against hurried development, inadequate testing and limited effectiveness.
Farmers also warned against custody battles over data and called for reliable energy and connectivity infrastructure.
They were somewhat inured to the pace of change; for example, the development of alternative proteins, trusting instead in the demand for higher-value real meat and dairy foods.
Employment needs and changing expectations of workers were high on the agenda, including the apparent intention of the government to turn off the tap for focused and driven immigrants.
Farmers commented on the lack of appreciation in society for what they do, with its risks of low returns, weather and biosecurity events, long hours and animal health issues.
They feel picked on for environmental legislation when so many farmers are doing amazing things for the environment.
“They want people to come and see the farms, experience the beauty and feed the pride, passion and belief they put into producing the food we eat,” Jones and Love reported.
In a chapter headed Natural Capital, Proudfoot and the KPMG team said intensive production systems had impacted ecosystems and caused environmental degradation.
The actions of a few had put all farmers under scrutiny.
“The perception farmers can no longer be trusted as guardians of the land is leading the industry towards tighter regulation, more one-size-fits-all remediation and increasing requirements to capture and report data.
“This is an undesirable path that will see much invested in managing perceptions and significantly less in fundamentally enhancing ecosystems for the benefit of current and future generations.
“The agri-food sector should stand up collectively and make bold commitments on how it will operate moving forward.
“This could involve making pledges on achieving carbon neutrality, pest eradication or regenerating native ecosystems so that the industry stands out as being part of NZ’s future rather than its past.”
KPMG noted entrenched positions on water and irrigation are such that the opportunity to unlock a diversity of higher-value land uses has become lost in the noise.
“One farmer said the industry needs to convince the community that water does not have any impact on pollution. It is bad farming practices that cause pollution.”
People appeared to pick holes in the recent water quality report data because it showed that things were improving.
Despite frequent droughts, most of NZ has no water storage despite a plentiful supply of water.
The agri-food sector needs to move quickly to a collective commitment over swimmable rivers and lakes, KPMG suggested.
On the positive side, survey respondents welcomed the Government’s forestry initiatives for their promise of more planting of native trees, an expansion of the national forest estate and a possible link between more trees on farms and carbon-neutral milk or beef.
“The potential of the forestry sector to provide a range of environmental mitigations to other agri-food producers, as well as lifting its economic contribution to the wider community, is well-recognised.
“Now, for the first time in many years, there appears to be a pathway for these benefits to be realised.”
