Our food system workers are heroes too

Sandra Faulkner

Opinion

Like healthcare workers, food system workers have been the frontline heroes throughout the fight against Covid-19.

While food producers, manufacturers and distributers have been acknowledged as essential businesses, those physically in the harvesting crews, packhouses, planting gangs, paddocks, trucks and milking sheds often remain faceless and are simply referred to as ‘agriculture' or ‘horticulture'. They are business owners, large and small, they are contractors, they are employees — but first and foremost they are people and members of families who care deeply about them.

These are the people who have put food on our tables every single day. These are the people who continue to put money in the government coffers so they, in turn, can provide support and assistance to those less fortunate. These are the people who get up every day, go to work (often outside their family ‘bubble') to ensure that our world continues to revolve to a reasonably ‘normal' rhythm.

New Zealand produce is sought-after the world over, as a safe, healthy food option. Decades of farming innovation coupled with a temperate climate, tech-savvy processing and adroit marketing have made food our biggest export earner.

We are getting better at celebrating our champions in food and fibre production and I feel that, locally, there is an innate understanding of the fact that it will be our primary industries that protect us from the worst of the pandemic impacts.

Yet the Covid-19 pandemic threatens all that we know to be true in our global marketplace — it has effectively closed down the food service industry internationally and it has caused huge, costly delays in processing, shipping and cool-chain logistics.

A crisis like the one we currently face will have a devastating effect on food systems — disruption of the delicate balance of world food trade leads to supply issues, food wastage and ultimately, families going hungry.

Let's not forget, however, that there is nothing like a crisis to encourage innovation, ideas and new models of delivering what people need. What may cause a more traditional business model to falter could be the spark that lights the fire of another.

In no way has this been better highlighted than the rise and rise of ‘click and collect' food options. What was the domain of the ‘cash-rich, time-poor' professional has now become, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

This trend will radically change food distribution across the products and services on offer, business models and the supply chain that services them.

We need to foster innovation and smooth disruption wherever we can. We need to look after the people in our food system first — understanding their fears and anxieties, yet fostering healthy businesses and encouraging them to think outside the square.

This is not the time for big, wholesale change. It is the time for simple, small-scale transformation, a time for taking the things we already have and making them better.

So, what is the real issue we need to address here in the Tairawhiti region? Everyone will have a different answer to this question depending on their own circumstances.

For me it is simple — we need to increase our overall revenue for our region. By increasing our revenue in the region, we are better able to provide for people — be it income, skills and training, health and emotional wellbeing — a sense of place and purpose with a future.

How do we do that? We get the people in the room who are already doing it well. We find out from them what is needed to make water storage and usage smarter, accommodation more readily available and business less costly . . . because they are already proven successful at looking after their people, their environment and their bottom line.

And we need stop selling out to overseas, and indeed, out-of-district interests who have no skin in our game. Imagine if a large percentage of the timber grown in our hills was required to be processed here in Tairawhiti and carbon credits off forested land in the region could only be owned by local, rate-paying residents. Equally, all fruit grown here using our precious resources should at least be packed here in Tairawhiti.

Those two changes could be transformational, using our existing infrastructure (sawmills and packhouses) while encouraging those businesses to invest further in their people and expansion — taking what we already have and making it better.

In this time of deep uncertainty, we have collectively come to understand the value of ‘keeping it local', of caring for those close to us in our various communities — of what we actually need.

By bringing the right people into the room to discuss our regional recovery, we do a great service to all of those frontline heroes because we acknowledge their work ethic and value their futures along with our own.

To all of you who got up today to help put food on the tables of others — whatever your role and wherever you work — you are the beating heart of Tairawhiti right now. Thank you!