Regen?

AVO UPDATE

Regen?

By Jen Scoular : Chief Executive, NZ Avocado

I recently attended a hui on regenerative farming practices. A collection of 150 agribusiness stakeholders met to better understand what “regen” means, how it might apply to our sectors and how we might leverage the concepts of regenerative agriculture as New Zealand Inc.

The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has set up a Technical Advisory Group and that group presented a definition of regen to the hui. The next steps were to set out some actions we could collectively or individually take that might better enable New Zealand to leverage a position to attach to our products, to create value with consumers, about the way we farm or grow.

Most of the participants had been attending such workshops for decades, although a few younger people were also in the room. We had facilitators and went through a process of seeking views, debating at tables and feeding back to the larger group.

We finished the first morning with a list of ten priorities that we were told we would spend the afternoon debating at our tables, and coming up with potential actions we might need to take to mitigate issues around water or waste or nitrate leaching.

...we needed to recognise that Māori didn’t make plans the way this workshop was suggesting

Quietly a very well-spoken member of a table from Taranaki stood up and in fifteen minutes changed the course of the workshop, my own thinking and hopefully the thinking of most in the room. She suggested that if we as a collective wished to talk about regenerative practices with Māori in the room, we needed to recognise that Māori didn’t make plans the way this workshop was suggesting. We can’t look at any one environmental impact individually, we need to look at all of them together, she said. We need to start with the values that underpin the very nature of Māori thinking and Māori views on enduring partnerships with the land we live off and live on. Another speaker talked about a Māori Trust deciding ten years ago not to invest in dairy farming because of the negative impact on the land, land that has value way beyond the twenty-year plan of the dairy enterprise.

Don’t get me wrong, we heard too that farmers who have been on the land for three generations have equal respect for the land as Māori, that was not the difference being highlighted. It was the way we think about what needs to happen to support policy and practice change – we perhaps don’t recognise how deeply connected many of the issues and therefore solutions are or need to be. Going through a list of issues one by one, and from that setting actions, is not the way to approach finding a way forward in partnership with Māori in the development of Aotearoa Inc.

I think I respect Māori culture and values, but do I understand enough to truthfully respect them?

For me at the workshop a penny dropped. I think I respect Māori culture and values, but do I understand enough to truthfully respect them? This very articulate explanation of how differently we think and then act, was a real eye opener for me. I don’t know the answer, but I know I want to make sure my eyes stay open, my ears listen more and my mind changes how it hears and how it thinks. I hope there were many like me at the workshop who took a big step in learning, absolutely what we might term a step sideways from conventional thinking, but a fundamental one if we are truly wanting to partner with our Māori colleagues and be a nation of all people thinking and working together.

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