Earle Lecture
“A Future for New Zealand Food” the 2019 Earle Lecture Presented by Dr Kevin Marshall Allan Main, FNZIFST The Earle lecture is a biennial award presented to a distinguished recipient who has made notable contributions to the impact of engineering and technology in New Zealand. It is hosted jointly by the Manawatu Branches of the Royal Society of New Zealand and the Institute of Professional Engineers and honours the contributions of Dick and Mary Earle, well-known to NZIFST, recognising their immense contribution to biotechnology and food technology regionally, nationally and globally. Early in October Dr Kevin Marshall, a long-standing Wellington member of NZIFST and the JC Andrews Awardee in 2006, delivered the 2019 Earle Lecture in Palmerston North on the subject “A Future for New Zealand Food”. In his opening comments, Kevin confessed to having known the Earles for his entire career with his professional and personal paths intertwining with Dick and Mary’s since the 1960’s. Indeed Kevin admitted that his first ever job application as a fresh BE graduate was to Dick and Mary at the Meat Industry Research Institute of New Zealand ... he was declined! A short while later when Kevin enrolled at Massey University for his post-graduate degree it was under the supervision of Prof Dick Earle. Kevin has since experienced a long and distinguished career spanning an extensive cross-section of our key food export industries including dairy, fruit, meat and seafood. Kevin’s assessment of the prognosis for our food future derives from the insights enabled by that that deep knowledge of the New Zealand food industry, leading him to an alternative scenario from zealots who proclaim that our food future is vegan, and all animal farming in New Zealand must stop. Unlike those who proclaim doom unless we frame an animal-free future for Kiwi food, Kevin anticipates our core platform of animal-based food exports will be retained but reframed to a more sustainable model, supplemented by alternative uses of land in a few areas where overintensification of animal farming cannot be sustained even with better control practices. In preface to his lecture, Kevin professed his belief (informed by his personal GP) that there are “no bad foods but there are certainly bad diets” implying that public and individual health responds to managing long-run consumption rather than maligning single foods. Later reflection identified that this philosophical tenet likely embodies a broader Marshall doctrine that oversimplification of issues by distilling them to isolated factoids commends ineffective solutions to problems and causes irrational choices to be made. That position seemed to be reflected in the underpinning logic of Kevin’s analysis of the prognosis for animal-sourced foods in our future that followed. Kevin openly acknowledges that there are immense challenges ahead for our traditional food industries but is sure that these are not and must not be insurmountable. Indeed, in Kevin’s estimation the future for our animal farming food industry continues to be “exciting”.
The Earle Lecture 2019 was presented by Kevin Marshall
Not a popular view - a considered one Kevin admitted that this alternative view is not popular with the vocal echelons that name-call those professing that animal farming can be performed sustainably as “denialists” and then attack farmers as “social pariahs”. Kevin exemplified this citing the reception given his colleague Fonterra’s Dr Jeremy Hill who was recently on the end of a media roasting after presenting to a proteins conference a similar fact-informed assessment supporting a future, albeit a reframed future, for animal farming in New Zealand. Coincidentally, during this Earle Lecture I was seated with an anonymous local farmer and the relief with which Kevin’s alternative message was received was apparent on his face. At the conclusion of Kevin’s presentation this same farmer professed that this was “the first public meeting on the future of NZ farming I have attended where I have not felt hated”. Kevin’s lecture wove a path through familiar factoids and instead of declaring a bankrupt future for dairy and meat farmers arrived at New Zealand applying technological know-how to navigate a pathway that delivers sustainable animal farming to provide fully sustainable animalderived foods, particularly dairy and meat to premium markets. Kevin’s initial focus was a situation analysis assembling the generally agreed factual context framing future global food needs and requisite sustainability boundaries. This analysis drew on (and cited) a plethora of reports published in recent years generally delivered by multi-disciplinary international assemblies of subject experts. These collective assessments intersect at a consensus requiring substantially
It is not the world that is threatened, but the world as we know it, and time is short 34
Food New Zealand
