But he has now found himself one of those people, enjoying being at the sharp end of land use as a shepherd on Mangarara Station in Central Hawke’s Bay after spending his Nuffield scholarship considering how to engineer a new approach for New Zealand agriculture to adapt to the wave of change breaking on it.
Lang’s scholarship studied a new way for farming, known as regenerative farming, a phrase he stumbled across later in his study work to describe a new approach to dealing with agriculture’s issues.
It was a philosophy that combined practices of soil health, ecosystem function, climatic resilience and crop yields, all wrapped around a “community-centric” approach to acquiring the knowledge of those practices.
Lang said the difference to a conventional systems approach used today was to expect a higher level of creativity to problem-solving rather than relying on inputs for control and management over a science-driven, linear technology transfer approach to innovation.
Lang acknowledged the practice was holistic in its approach, putting the farming community in the middle of the issue rather than as the recipient of a top -down answer to the problem the community might be facing.
“It is an approach that enables more diverse participation, one that places equal value on local and external experience.”
He was well placed to understand how rural communities could feel shoved to one side in debates over land use and development on their back doors. He oversaw the consent process for the Ruataniwha Dam project.
He described it as an intense process that was adversarial in nature and one relying heavily on lawyers and external consultants while the local community felt increasingly disenfranchised by the exercise.
“I just did not feel like the whole process was a particularly healthy one and we still do not know really where things are at now.”
He saw farmers having to face a line of challenges including nutrient loss, climate change and animal welfare and deal with claims NZ could become the Detroit of agriculture for failing to participate in technology-driven food production.
But the sector had little support to manage the coming changes and responding to historic practices’ present-day implications, including erosion and nutrient losses.
“It is as if they are being told ‘you are farming this way, change your system and we will talk in another three years about the next issue you have to deal with’.”
Lang’s travels took him to a wide variety of farmers who would be loath to be categorised under any particular label, including being regenerative.
Ranging from an organic sheep farmer in Scotland to an arable farmer in Denmark and a no-till Irish cropping farmer, all were characterised by their ability to draw in a group of like-minded farmers.
They would often combine with them to create a direct-to-consumer business and exhibited a high level of marketing nous and understanding of what their mainly urban customers wanted while continuing to farm in a way that fitted their lifestyles.
“For a lot of them it was having a very strong understanding that farming successfully was more about what you do not do than what you do do.”
Having spent only a relatively small portion of his working life on the land itself, Lang was reluctant to say the traditionally stoic, sole owner-operator approach to NZ farming had stifled farmers’ ability to draw in a wider level of expertise and creativity.
“I guess what I am trying to describe is how these farmers have a really good group of peers almost like a discussion group within a community, best defined by its collective skills and innovation rather than its geography.”
NZ’s silo approach to research and innovation meant information flowing from the science to the farm was inevitably limited to the field the researcher specialised in.
And often the external technical experience offered to farmers ran the risk of being heavy on science but less so on creativity.
“And creativity is the greatest resource in such a case of change.”
He was, however, encouraged that the approach was showing signs of change in NZ, having seen farmer involvement in such initiatives as the Beef + Lamb NZ environment forum and in pastoral greenhouse gas research.
“More and more people are realising in the past we have tinkered around the edges and really have to go forward with some major changes.”
