PRESIDENT’S WORD
THE POSITIVES IN CHANGE Barry O’Neil : HortNZ president
I was reflecting recently on how, within such a short period, there have been huge changes in our country, our business and our lives. As the saying goes, ’the only thing constant in life is change’, and it seems to me we have had more than our fair share over the past couple of years! And while the primarily Covid-19 driven change has been hard, the impacts of too many disconnected government policy changes have been just as hard. But rather than go into a dark place, I thought I would try and focus on the positives of where we are at. We just have to look back in time to see that change and disruption create opportunities, such as what happened to Blockbuster, with Netflix going on to become a real winner, at least until the competition caught up! So with the plethora of difficult challenges that are facing us at the moment, are there actually some opportunities that we could be pursuing? Firstly let’s not lose sight that we have a winner when it comes to what we are growing – amazing fresh fruit and vegetables! We have the most environmentally friendly primary sector growing system, and we are not destroying the planet when we grow our crops. And if we add in the benefits of the natural and healthy produce that goes out of our gates,
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which people are needing more of in their daily lives, we definitely have a winner. Surely this alone should be sufficient for future success? Unfortunately that’s not so, as all of us have had huge increases in our production costs. As a result, we must continue to grow the value of our produce for our businesses to stay profitable. The opportunity here is to do more and better in promotion of both the health benefits and the environmentally sustainable way in which we grow. Yes, I realise there are still some growing issues to improve on, which we are all proactively working on. But when I compare where we are at to others in the primary sector, I think we should be proud of what and how we are growing.
The opportunity here is to do more and better in promotion of both the health benefits and the environmentally sustainable way in which we grow Zespri spends significantly on promoting Zespri kiwifruit, both the health aspects and the way in which it is grown. As a result, they have obtained significant premium from consumers. As an industry,
we definitely don’t want to be stuck in the commodity market in a race to the bottom. Rather, we need to be at the top of the ’food chain’ in the healthy, added value space, in the consumer ready-to-eat market. We are not all Zespris but can’t we work together and with government to get greater leverage? 5+ A Day and United Fresh do great work domestically, but we all know we could be doing more.
Focus on health and wellness In a Covid-19 world, where people have a real focus on their family’s health and wellness, we need to be doing everything possible to promote the health components of our products over and over again. We already have some great messages, such as our produce contains antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, and is low in fat and calories. But now, with Covid-19 affecting all aspects of our lives, staying healthy is an even greater focus for nearly all the people of the world. If free range eggs can command a premium in the market, surely we must be able to drive greater value with our healthy, natural, environmentally friendly products, in a world that is wanting and needing healthiness. Our plant breeders provide real opportunities for us to not only produce even better vegetable and fruit varieties, but also to develop new categories that we are not currently growing, or that will grow better in a changing climate. Our primary
