Exporters of New Zealand primary products enjoy an enviable international reputation but keeping it will only get tougher.
That reputation put a massive target on NZ’s back – not only for competing exporters but increasingly for home-grown critics of the impact of farming on the environment.
Satisfying those expectations has proved to be an endless and moveable challenge among the myriad of other requirements and expectations.
Farming can only get more complex, as the recent debate on the ethics of using imported palm kernel showed, but the rewards were potentially significant.
Our series showed commodities faced a difficult future, especially when competitors could control production at the flick of a switch, as seen with milk.
Horticulture provided a solution and confirmed the consensus from the series that our exporting future was in adding value rather than increasing volume while using marketing that depicted NZ’s natural beauty and production attributes to command premium prices.
Horticultural exports were out-sprinting those from the pastoral sector by producing what consumers wanted and using NZ attributes in marketing.
NZ kiwifruit growers who met food safety, management and quality standards were rewarded by prices twice those of fruit from competing countries.
In contrast, our series confirmed the meat sector was plagued by a lack of farmer commitment to processors and little appreciation of their role in the value chain with two processing co-operatives financially hamstrung and unable to break out of the commodity cycle.
Financial pressure also hindered dairy farmers but that was underpinning a push to return to low-cost, pasture-based systems.
In a world where consumers were increasingly suspicious of factory farming and the use of supplementary feed, producing grass-fed pastoral protein was considered a major marketing coup for NZ.
Small was seen as beautiful for the deer industry where farmers were showing confidence by retaining hinds and the sector was encouraging European consumers to eat venison all year round.
“NZ does have an extraordinary reputation in the international market. It is a strong and trusted brand with integrity.”
Rebecca Smith
NZ Story
The series confirmed trying to feed the planet was not worthy of consideration. Instead NZ had the foundation on which to shift from being a seller of commodities to exporting value-added products.
NZ Story director Rebecca Smith said Brand NZ stood for attributes and reputation other exporters envied.
“NZ does have an extraordinary reputation in the international market. It is a strong and trusted brand with integrity.”
The world likes us and wants to do business with us but we have to listen and respond to what consumers want.
Albeit an obvious goal, becoming a supplier of value-added products was more than just making money.
Agribusiness leader John Brakenridge wrote that higher and more stable prices were a consequence of being a supplier of premium brands that offered rich experiences, led market categories and shaped markets.
However, that involved a difficult but potentially more rewarding route to sale, he said.
Southland farmer Dean Rabbidge wrote that producing more was not a solution, evident by regional councils introducing new, more restrictive environmental laws.
But the counter to producing less was being rewarded for quality and that came from adding value.
Rabbidge said it also relied on farmers supplying products “true to label” that were grass-fed, antibiotic-free and met quality standards but then consumers had to be told that story “with more passion and conviction than we are”.
Aligned with that was attracting the best students to the primary sector but to do that the perception of farming had to change, starting on our doorstep.
Farming had done a poor job of telling NZ its positive stories. Instead it scrambled into defensive mode when faced with claims of bobby calf cruelty and environmental degradation.
The actions of a few left the impression many farmers were environmental vandals and animal abusers.
Organisations like Fish and Game and the Tourism Export Council had attacked farming and in doing so secured the moral high ground, ignoring issues of pollution and carbon emissions on their own patches.
As political and community leaders said in our series, farmers were not the environmental vandals they were portrayed to be and changing attitudes towards the environment, animal welfare and climate change had not been recognised by society.
“Let’s not keep looking over our shoulder and playing the blame game. Let’s move forward and continue to improve the quality of our rivers and lakes,” Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy said.
Our series revealed a desire for producers to reduce exposure to commodities but that required a commitment of capital, suppliers being loyal to processors and investment in product development and marketing.
All of that had been talked about for decades but until producers, processors and exporters committed to breaking out of the commodity cycle pastoral farmers would remain price-takers and NZ predominantly a commodity trader with a bit of value-added exports tacked on the side.
