The Agritech Strategy Roadshow is travelling around the country seeking feedback to help identify key priority areas for Government action to support the sector.
Agritech New Zealand is partnering with several government agencies to develop a range of industry-led initiatives and actions to help the agricultural technology sector, lift export earnings and provide more innovation.
Executive director Peter Wren-Hilton says one of the aims is to help farmers and growers sustainably produce higher-value goods.
Workshops have been held in Palmerston North and Auckland with others scheduled for Hamilton, Lincoln and Tauranga.
While the Auckland workshop attracted a strong representation from tech companies and industry providers it is expected the Hamilton and Lincoln events will see farmers well represented.
Adoption of agritech on farms is a key driver to increase productivity, profitability and sustainability so Agritech NZ has begun talking to the Precision Agriculture Association to see how the two organisations can collaborate.
Association board members Brendan O’Connell, Kenneth Irons and Sophie Rebbeck have been appointed to the Agritech executive council.
Innovation needs to be driven by farmer and grower needs and companies creating new technologies are aware of the importance of that because those people will be the end uses of products that make it to market, Wren-Hilton said.
Agritech NZ recently hosted a workshop for a delegation of NZ companies heading to Ireland and Britain next month while in June NZ agri robotic and automation researchers and entrepreneurs visited northern California to look at opportunities for NZ agritech companies created by increasing labour costs and shortages faced by horticultural and cropping operations in the area.
The British visit will be largely dairy tech based and will include the National Ploughing Championships in Ireland, which performs a similar role to NZ National Fieldays, attracting 300,000 people over three days.
One of the biggest challenges the NZ agritech sector faces is the large number of early-stage companies involved in what is, in NZ at least, a limited market, Wren-Hilton said.
That is one of the reasons why companies are also looking at overseas opportunities. Many technological innovations will benefit farmers here and abroad.
There is plenty of room for the NZ agritech sector to grow. In the past five years NZ exported about $1.5 billion of agritech products annually with no real, exponential growth. Israel on the other hand exports about 10 times that amount, closer to $13b.
The head of the all-of-government agritech taskforce working with Agritech NZ, David Downs, told last week’s Our Land and Water Symposium information gathered at the workshops will be used to develop a plan to transform the industry.
The plan will map out the state of the sector, global trends, obstacles to growth and NZ’s comparative advantages.
Obstacles the industry faces include a shortage of growth capital, the slow uptake of technological innovations by some parts of the primary sector and a lack of sustained and co-ordinated commitment from the Government and industry, Downs said.
It’s hoped that by having a number of government departments involved in establishing the plan there will be greater co-ordination of funding and regulations, which will benefit the NZ agritech industry as a whole and the farmers and growers who will benefit from its development.
Agritech NZ is a purpose driven, membership-funded organisation launched last year with more than 80 members including Fonterra, Zespri, Ballance, LIC, AgResearch and Callaghan Innovation,
Future agritech roadshow stops
Hamilton
Waikato Innovation Park
1 Meloday Lane, Ruakura
August 26
11am to 1pm
Lincoln
Room C1
Commerce Building
Lincoln University
August 29
2pm to 4pm
Tauranga
Classic Flyers
Jean Batten Drive
September 2
9.30am to 11.30am
