Future-proofing unsung heroes of NZ primary production
A new arable industry strategy aims to provide cropping farmers with the skills, quality assurance and infrastructure needed to achieve future growth and profitability.
David Birkett and FAR’s Alison Stewart.
Called Future Fields 2030, the New Zealand Arable Production Growth Strategy is a collaboration between the Foundation for Arable Research (FAR), Federated Farmers’ Arable Sector Group, United Wheatgrowers and the Ministry for Primary Industries.
It was launched at FAR’s CROPS field day at its Chertsey Arable Research Site near Ashburton.
The strategy considers how arable growers’ businesses, and the sector overall, might be strengthened and better equipped to identify and pursue high value opportunities into the future.
Federated Farmers Arable Industry Group chair David Birkett says the strategy “will enable growers to better capture future opportunities and develop more autonomy within their businesses”.
Future Fields 2030 builds on the arable sector’s strong base of agronomy-focused research and extension, adding three priorities: building skills for success, standards of excellence and enabling infrastructure.
Building skills includes everything from improving financial literacy to evaluating value chain opportunities beyond the farm gate, enabling arable farmers to connect with food innovators, start-ups and existing food businesses.
Standards of excellence involves identifying and verifying the production and environmental assurance standards required to provide customer confidence and build preference for NZ arable growers and their products.
The third tier involves identifying infrastructure opportunities, both on-and off-farm.
This includes exploring possible machinery pools/syndicates to reduce costs of production, addressing infrastructure gaps on-farm and opportunities for investment off-farm in arable transport, storage and processing infrastructure.
FAR chair Steven Bierema says FAR is pleased to support the Future Fields 2030 strategy. “This strategy is crucial for ensuring that our growers are equipped to meet emerging market demands and is directly aligned with FAR’s commitment to driving research and development to enhance farmer profitability and sustainability.”
The strategy has set time-lines and measures for delivery through to 2030, with funding sought from levies, industry and government.
Arable farmers are the unsung heroes of NZ’s primary sector, contributing more than $2 billion to the economy through their production of grain, high value seed and an increasing range of other crops.
Outputs from the arable sector are also vital to the $35 billion livestock industry, through seeds for pastures, grains and other inputs for animal feed.