5 minutes with Hugh Good
Beef + Lamb New Zealand Global Market Intelligence and Research Manager
Bringing our overseas customers, ‘conscious foodies’, to life for farmers at events is a bit of a buzz too. Many of them never get to see who experiences and enjoys their product, so that’s pretty compelling when you can show them.
Tell us a bit about your role at B+LNZ?
Other than regenerative agriculture, tell us about other emerging trends in the agriculture space and how might these shape the future of New Zealand ag exports? There are a lot of trends, some of which will be pretty challenging to our product, especially from plant analogues, fermentation technology and looking further out, cell-based cultures. But there are even more exciting opportunities.
I look after all the consumer research and insight for our nonNew Zealand export markets. What is your background, ie How did you get into agriculture product research? I have a Masters in psychology but spent 13 years in market research and consumer insight prior to joining B+LNZ. What do you enjoy most about the work you do? Finding actionable insights that can inform our strategy in market and drive engagement with B+LNZ. What I get the most buzz from however is identifying insights we can use to increase the value of New Zealand beef and lamb globally.
We did a report – Shaping the Future of New Zealand’s Red Meat Sector – which ties some of them together and looks at how they will affect the sector. It was this report that identified the emerging trend around regenerative agriculture and led to our further research in this area.
People aren’t going to buy regeneratively produced food if it doesn’t taste any good.”
6 | THE FARMLANDER
What research findings have surprised you most in your time doing NZ primary product export market research? That’s a tough one. I think the findings that people find most difficult to accept is that we’re very self-oriented and self-focused, regardless of what generation you’re in, when it comes to food. Before you start engaging people around higher order food attributes, e.g. environment or animal welfare, you need to meet the basic needs around taste, price and health. No one finishes a meal exclaiming ‘Boy, that was sustainable!’ That’s a challenge for regen as you need to ensure the basic needs are met, not compromised on and ideally enhanced, before you can start talking environmental sustainability. It’s an obvious point but people aren’t going to buy regeneratively produced food if it doesn’t taste any good (and I’m not saying it won’t). Why do you feel this kind of research work is important and how do you feel that it helps Kiwi farmers? I believe we need to be customer oriented to win in the future. Being product oriented has served us well to date and we’re super-efficient producers and have a great product. But for the industry to be successful
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