The council is an advisory group to Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor.
“How should we be positioning ourselves when it comes to sustainable farming?” he asked the Red Meat Sector conference.
“Should we be positioning ourselves as laggards trying to ignore this whole idea of sustainability and go as slowly as we can?
“Should we be fast followers and look at what everyone is doing and then implement just slightly behind everyone else?
“Or is there an opportunity for us to position ourselves as world-leading, to develop the value chains, to develop the capability, to develop the technology, to invest in the research and development and put in place the incentive schemes so that we actually see this whole move to sustainable farming as an opportunity rather than as a threat?”
Jager said farmers must treat it as an opportunity.
“Once we’ve made that fundamental positioning decision as a country then the opportunity is for us to partner with the Government of today to ensure that our capability and our value chains are aligned so that we can compete effectively for the next 30 years.”
Jager said that worldwide, most plant-based proteins are positioned as commodities, whereas ruminant protein can be positioned in a premium way.
“And it needs to be because it’s environmentally more expensive to produce.
“Very simply, the protein production systems that exist today are not sustainable either for today’s needs or for our future needs.
“We need more protein and we need to evolve the protein supply system to be more sutainable. The focus on this is going to get stronger.
While ruminant production has a great impact on the environment some systems are more efficient than others.
“That’s important for New Zealand because in fact there are reasons to believe we have a competitive advantage in that space.
“We’re a long way from markets, our land is expensive and our labour is expensive.
“We’re never going to be strong commodity exporters. That’s not what we can be.
“The opportunity for us is in the value-added space.
“Now, then, the hard question we need to ask ourselves is how well are we performing in the value-added space today and is our national capability effectively aligned to the creation of value-added businesses?”
He said the meat industry is very strong on value-add.
“We have a long way to go but it’s going to be a team effort because we’re not where we need to be today.
“I absolutely believe there will be a market for our ruminant protein because we’re going to need more protein in the world.
“It’s true that our market share may drop but the total amount of ruminant protein will continue to increase.
“Sustainable farming will be an absolute requirement because of what’s happening globally.
“But more than that it’s a competitive opportunity for us in NZ.”
