How about we feed ourselves again?
Wouldn’t our lives be better if more of the food we grew in the south was eaten here, instead of exporting – and importing – such massive volumes? Michael Fallow reports.
Acouple of generations ago, says Dave Kennedy, Southland was able to supply around 80% of its own food needs.
Now it barely provides 10%. And that, the Invercargill-based vice-chair of Farmers’ Markets New Zealand regrets, is what you get when your agriculture sector favours exports over domestic supply, ‘‘when feeding ourselves should be the first priority’’.
The old World War II poster asking ‘‘Is your journey really necessary?’’, cautioning people against the waste of unnecessary travel, could nowadays apply to our much-journeyed food. And not just overseas.
Even within New Zealand, our food distribution is nationally rather than regionally based, and most production has shifted to an industrial scale.
Most of our milk comes from Christchurch, our flour is largely imported and check out how many of our tinned apricots come from South Africa.
‘‘We feel privileged.’’ says Kennedy, ‘‘if we can get our hands on ‘export quality’ produce from our own growers.’’
‘‘We import around $1 billion of our food annually, and while I would much prefer to support locally grown produce, it is becoming increasingly harder to do so.’’
The diversity isn’t there. Southland has 950,000ha in pasture/grazing, 76,000 in plantation forestry, 62,000 in fodder and grain, and a piddly 1800ha in horticulture.
When many Southlanders are struggling to afford
the increasing high prices of semi-fresh produce (much has been on the road or in storage for some time), Kennedy doesn’t find it especially easy to sympathise with farmers when they drive into town in their massive tractors, complaining of hardship.
But he does accept that both farmers and consumers have genuine concerns about our current food systems. And he does see existing models internationally that have value for both.
For example, Italy’s support of farmers’ markets has boosted farmer earnings and benefited consumers by providing access to cheaper, fresher and more diverse produce.
National surveys of New Zealand farmers’ markets have shown that they are generally cheaper than supermarkets for basic food items, and the quality is much better.
There is also much consumer demand for more organically grown produce – and if all farmers diversified a little to support the domestic economy, it would have the added benefit of reducing emissions without compromising profits, Kennedy says.
Consider this – during the past financial year, New Zealand imported around $40m worth of fruit and veges, $22m worth of pork (about 60% of our consumption), and 75% of the grain in our bread. Three-quarters of our imported grain and feed goes to our dairy herds.
Here in Southland, when cow numbers exploded from 50,000 in 1992 to 670,000 by 2012, the environmental impact was almost immediate as rivers flowed with nitrates, phosphates and sediment.
The Edendale Dairy Factory is among the world’s largest, but little it produces is consumed locally.
One upshot of all this food movement is that in 1986, our country supported around 24,500 growers, most of them family-based enterprises serving their local community. Fewer than 900 growers remain, Kennedy says.
Some 95% of our milk production heads overseas. We’re a major exporter of kiwifruit, apples, avocados, potatoes and squash.
Kennedy sees an inherent fragility in all this activity.
Regional food security and resilience have been forgotten. Climate change is already walloping our food supply. Floods, storms and droughts are coming with increasing regularity.
‘‘One weather event can easily wipe out a major grower that our national food supply is dependent on – our food security is actually in a perilous state,’’ he says.
The supermarket duopoly of Foodstuff and Woolworths continues to drive down prices for growers. Adding a third massive supermarket chain would not change their collective demand for bulk food at low cost.
‘‘They’re going to be going after the same cheap food and large producers. That’s not going to solve the problem.’’
So where should the focus be? For one thing, Kennedy proposes more support for localised food distribution and produce sharing through farmers’ markets and community hubs.
He also supports the emergence – or re-emergence – of smaller, local food processors.
‘‘We used to have flour mills, dairy factories all over Southland. They supported local families, local businesses, and provided a variety of different products – boutique production processing providing a range of local varieties from local produce – an attraction to the food tourist.’’
And, says Kennedy, boutique producers often provide bettertasting fare than something massproduced.
There’s a big demand for organic food at farmers’ market level, he says, but very little supply, so smaller, mixed farms that apply regenerative and organic practices should be supported.
Kennedy pauses here to wonder as well that less industrialised, intensive farming, and more varied practices on each farm, wouldn’t also make for a better lifestyle for our farmers.
Southland is as well placed as anywhere to be celebrating regional food differences by growing what’s best suited to its environment, rather than bending nature to our will.
Those amazing heritage apple species that grow here – you’d think there’s a cider industry to be developed.
A resilient food system is underpinned by having a range of options for what can be grown in changing environments and weather patterns. Instead, we’ve seen options reducing. For instance, the United States lost 95% of its unique seed strands in the past century.
As conditions change, diversity becomes a stabilising thing, enabling us to be more reactive more readily.
Kennedy would also love to see seasonal eating habits being promoted domestically and in restaurants.
By accepting that we cannot access all foods year-round, we not only substantially reduce food miles, but also allow ourselves to enjoy a more varied and seasonappropriate diet.
Land issues? Well, let’s not forget the urban environments.
How about more public- and council-owned land being made available for food-growing enterprises? It’s happening in places – Queen’s Park for one – and, aesthetically, a well-tended vegetable plot is itself something that can be attractive to visitors.
Councils mow lots of lawns throughout the city. ‘‘That’s a cost. It makes sense if community groups wanted to use council land to grow food,’’ Kennedy says. ‘‘It means we don’t have to look after it (as ratepayers), and it’s much more productive than grass.’’
All well and good, but Kennedy understands that this represents change – and that lately, this has been a scary thing indeed on so many fronts.
‘‘I think, since Covid, people want to go back to normal, and normal means how we did before that. Perhaps people don’t really want further disruption.’’
But this, he suggests, is looking at it through the wrong lens.
If our food systems were nourishing and enriching the land and our people, as opposed to the ‘‘extractive, dysfunctional, disconnected and wasteful systems we are currently experiencing’’, would that be such a terrible thing?
In such circumstances, change ‘‘could be a joyful process’’.