The Chief Executive: Acting in unity for industry good

Acting in unity for industry good

2020 was a challenging year for all of us and then there were the floods and hail over Christmas.

By Mike Chapman Chief Executive : HortNZ

The difficulties of 2020 are being repeated in 2021 and as noted in the President’s Word, we continue to face multiple and significant challenges. My reflection is that last year’s challenges and those we face currently are forcing us to change how we operate as an industry at all levels.

Many of the changes are coming from both the proposed and new environmental regulations, and from the need to find enough workers. These two areas dominated my attention in 2020 and I can see that there will be no change to my work priorities for 2021. The number one challenge here is how do we get the government to recognise the importance of horticulture; and then how do we get the government to enable growing healthy food into the future? I firmly believe that we can only achieve this outcome by working together as a collective, as one horticultural industry with clear and consistent messaging. My focus is to link the industry together to achieve unity through product groups, district associations and everyone involved in the industry for the benefit of growers. Being based in Wellington, Horticulture New Zealand has the unique ability to work daily at all levels in government to achieve the outcomes that horticulture needs in order to contribute to New Zealand’s economic and health well-being. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 world we now live in does not give any of us – including the government – the options that previously existed. Across all primary and industrial sectors, the same environmental and labour supply challenges are making continued operation very difficult. The government is being forced to make some very difficult decisions, and in making those decisions, there will be winners and losers.

I believe that the only approach to take is one where we would be in partnership with government. I do not believe, based on my previous experience, that taking an adversarial approach will achieve our goals. When you consider the decisions that have been made in recent months by the government, horticulture has been one of the winners. We have not got all that we need but we have got some support. Other sectors have not been so fortunate.

In addition to working with the government, what we are trying to do is create the best possible operating conditions for government support. When is comes to finding, training and retraining the best possible workers, we have our network of career progression managers, which we are working to expand. This network is taking a fresh and innovative approach, as can be seen from the article written by HortNZ’s newly appointed people capability manager in this edition on page 10. The ability to attract people to horticulture starts with our standing with the public and reputation as an industry. Our future workforce is motivated by their belief in what they are doing and the contribution they are making to our country and the environment. To keep attracting people to our sector, we are working on our reputation. Also, how we employ and engage with the new workforce needs to be adapted to fit their expectations. The more our sector does to make our employment attractive to our new and future workforce, the better our reputation with the public will be, and government will be more inclined to enable us to continue to adapt and grow. In effect this is a circle. What we do to attract and retain our workforce improves our public and government reputation, and increases what government is prepared to do to support horticulture. That in turn attracts more people to our workforce. We need to drive our work cycle to spiral upwards. The spiral upwards can only be achieved by us acting in unity. This is one of HortNZ’s top priorities for 2021.