PRESIDENT’S WORD
WHAT’S GOING TO BE INVOLVED IN GROWING NEW ZEALAND? Words by Barry O’Neil, President : Horticulture New Zealand
If anyone had told me at Christmas that within a few months a tiny silent virus would bring the world to its knees and that six months later 15 million people would be infected and 600,000 dead, I would have thought they were doomsayers. While large numbers roll off our tongues very easily, when you stop to think about the magnitude of these numbers it is truly staggering! New Zealand did a fantastic job getting on top of the virus and absolutely squashing that curve, but then Kiwis started to realise the challenges that lay ahead, starting with a million of our residents and citizens visiting or living overseas, many of whom are wanting to come home. Our success beating Covid-19 was in no small part due to us working together as a team of five million, and we should be very proud of that, but we were also helped by being a tiny isolated nation at the bottom of the world. But being isolated is also potentially going to be one of our greatest challenges – how can we stay connected to the rest of the world when many other countries we trade and communicate with have not been so lucky in controlling Covid-19? New Zealand must stay connected to the rest of the world to maintain its social and economic advantages – we export 80% of the food we 2
NZGROWER : AUGUST 2020
produce, we are reliant on overseas skills and labour, overseas advanced technologies, vehicles and machinery, fuel, and so on. We are part of this world, and we can no longer can survive for long periods disconnected from our global context. Resulting from a huge spend from the Covid stimulus and recovery package, every single Kiwi whether one year old or 100, will have a $40,000 debt that will have to be paid back. It’s not fair for the country to burden our future generations with the $200 billion of public debt that has now been created. We must use the Covid recovery investment and opportunity to drive an economic recovery that is focused on the food and fibre sector that will be more environmentally sustainable, and that is more connected to our communities with employment and support. The United Kingdom has more or less the same land area as New Zealand but produces twice the amount of food that we do – nearly 60 million tonnes compared to us at just under 30 million tonnes. But in an environment where we are trying to increase value not volume, and where we are also taking bold steps to address our polluted waterways as well as climate change, how can we also increase our productivity? Our twelve highest farmgate values created per hectare are actually from horticulture – different types of fruit and vegetable production are
at the top, with dairy only coming in at thirteen, and beef and lamb the lowest value per hectare of all farming activity. But when we consider export values, dairy is still miles ahead with over $18 billion, sheep and beef at $10 billion, and horticulture comes in at just over $6 billion if we include wine. That is because pastoral farming utilises over 10 million hectares, whereas horticulture including viticulture only utilises around 150,000 hectares – think about the potential that exists here to convert over 1 million hectares of land suitable to horticulture that is currently being farmed pastorally. Horticulture not only creates the highest land use economy and employment, but is also very much more environmentally sustainable compared to other sectors – and yes we are fortunate that we don’t have issues like methane gasses, urine leaching, pasture pugging, or animal welfare challenges to deal with. Of the challenges we did or do have, significant progress has been and will continue to be made so that horticulture will be one of the earliest sectors to meet the government’s carbon neutral conditions along with freshwater management outcomes. But while horticulture has a major and leading part to play in our economic, social, and environmental recovery, that’s not saying it’s going to be easy, and the next few years are going to be a very challenging time for many of us.
