Beeby was responding to comments by Lincoln University agribusiness senior lecturer Dr Nic Lees who spent three months in Ireland looking at the Irish Origin Green programme, which claims to be the world’s first national level, third-party verified sustainability programme and brand for agriculture.
As part of the programme, farm-level carbon footprints and other sustainability measures have been available to Irish farmers since 2011.
Lees says in contrast, NZ is only beginning to implement a comprehensive farm-level carbon footprint measurement system.
“This means it is not possible to give feedback to individual farmers on how their management practices affect their carbon footprint, or to demonstrate progress,” Lees said.
Furthermore, it limits the ability for the data to be aggregated to the industry level.
“This prevents the NZ agricultural industry from validating its sustainability credentials and demonstrating progress in reducing on-farm emissions,” he said.
Lees says NZ also lags behind Ireland in areas such as quality assurance and in traceability, only now being addressed as a result of the recent outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis.
“NZ has only recently developed a single quality assurance scheme for the red meat sector and NZ’s National Animal Identification and Traceability scheme (NAIT) has been shown to have significant weaknesses and to have been poorly implemented,” he said.
He says Origin Green provided valuable lessons for the NZ beef industries, in terms of its efforts to verify and communicate its sustainability credentials. It also has relevance to the wider NZ food industry.
“Origin Green shows the opportunity for a national sustainability brand that not only focuses on the beef sector but brings together multiple stakeholders across all NZ’s food industries. In doing this, NZ can take the lead in establishing its position as a niche food producer based on sustainable farming practices,” he said.
Beeby says NZ was world-leading in its development of assurance programmes, and has since moved to harmonise them and broaden their scope.
“We looked at overseas examples during the refinement of these programmes and are confident the new NZFAP (NZ Farm Assurance Programme) and NZFAP Plus programmes being rolled out by processing companies are a leading innovation,” Beeby said.
He says while Ireland’s Origin Green programme is solely focused on carbon, NZ’s assurance programme takes a wider and more integrated approach across environmental domains, looking across soils, water, greenhouse gases and climate change (carbon), biodiversity, people and biosecurity.
“Ireland may have been ahead on carbon but NZ is catching up, and B+LNZ, with support from the red meat sector, will soon launch its free greenhouse gas calculator as part of ensuring the sector meets its He Waka Eke Noa climate action partnership milestones,” he said.
Key to the development and refinement of NZ’s assurance programmes, and of the Taste Pure Nature origin brand they underpin, is collaboration.
“The collaboration across farmers, industry groups and processors is greater than any other country,” he said.
He says NZ Farm Assurance Incorporated, which owns NZFAP and NZFAP Plus, is focused on meeting customer needs and reducing duplication and costs across the sector.
“It also takes a leadership role in supporting farmers to know where to focus their efforts. A new National Standard for Wool has also just been established under NZFAP, providing consumers with further assurance,” he said.
Beeby says research shows consumers tend to make meat purchasing decisions primarily on taste, but that health and wellbeing and being better for the planet are catching up in terms of driving their behaviour.
“You can’t focus on one aspect and forget about the others – consumers won’t buy carbon-neutral meat if it tastes bad and isn’t good for you. That’s why we take a broad and integrated approach,” he said.
“Our focus on end consumers and the strong link with our consumer marketing programmes is NZ’s point of difference – we can do it all, while other countries can’t.”
Lees says a recent study he co-wrote with Joshua Aboah found that country of origin is the number one characteristic consumers use when choosing meat, and they mostly prefer their own local products.
He says this has significant implications for NZ meat exporters, as in many markets NZ is competing with local products.
“In these countries we need to provide consumers with a reason to choose our products rather than their locally-produced beef or lamb,” Lees said.
Beeby says consumers are more willing to trust their own country’s food production systems than those of other countries because they know more about their local farming systems.
“That’s why we’re investing in the Taste Pure Nature origin branding, to raise awareness of, and educate consumers about how red meat is produced in NZ and build trust in our production methods and the products that result,” Beeby said.
“NZ has already moved away from competing with local product overseas on price and we’re continuing to invest in positioning NZ beef and lamb as the natural first choice.”
