Kia ora team, welcome. Thank you for being part of the people's panel on food and farming. This is an experiment. The food and fiber peoples' panel is just that. It's people who are connected to the food system, either as farmers out in the back blocks of Waikato or down from Southland. We've got people who are more on the urban side, PhDs, nutritionists, and we've got people who campaign for change in this space as well. You aren't CEOs, you're not media trained, you don't represent an organisa
tion. Anything that you mention today is your own personal individual perspective, and that's what we want. Not everyone is gonna agree today, and that's the point, but you've all come here wanting to move the conversation forward despite those disagreements. And for that, I thank you as well. Alright, let's get straight into it. Let's do a couple of one word answers. Thank you. Thank you. So, nice and big. In one word, describe how climate change makes you feel. Only one word. So in one word, h
ow does climate change make you feel? Alright: adapt, considered hopeless, hopeful, resilient, adapt, distress and bananas. All right. We'll go with bananas first 'cause that's a little out of kilter. Well, because you made me choose one word and I'm, I'm equally terrified, but also hopeful. Um, so I'm hopeful because I'm really interested in what we will be and how our farm system will change. Will we be growing bananas in the corner of every paddock because that's now a product that we can add
, which which has a whole lot of benefits to our farm system. That really excites me. But I'm also terrified of what it might mean globally. Marnie, you wrote distress. Tell us about that. You know, the thing about climate change for me is it isn't just one thing. And it isn't just a single event. So the events that we had this year, you know, people talk a lot about, oh, we've just gotta get back on track after that. You know, we've just gotta, we've gotta, get back to, you know, clean up and g
et back to business. But, there is no getting back because there will be event, after event, after event, after event. Community will be affected, that community will be affected. Um, and so it's that rolling, that sort of rolling difficulty that is coming, that really troubles me. And as an ecologist, I am really worried about what we are gonna lose. Charles, what does adaptation look like for you and your communities or your farms? The world is always changing. We always adapt. And you just ha
ve to. And if you don't, you know, for me, I've got a 14-year-old, nearly 15-year-old, and a 9-year-old. I've gotta show some leadership and some strength so that they want to continue to be here. And I can't let that get in the way of showing the way. Now, I might not have all the answers, but I have to. You know, our Māori 16,000 years ago went from Taiwan, went through the South Pacific, and then 1100 odd years ago, we went from there, from the South Pacific islands, to here. We are always go
ing to be changing. And we can't stop the world from changing. And to me, that's, it feels like we are trying to tell something we have no control over, where we just have to adapt for it. We are living in its world. We, I live in Taiao. I don't, I'm not the one who dictates how it should operate. So that's how I view it. And maybe that's just because I don't want to look, I don't want my kids to be helpless. So that's just my thinking. Yeah. I think it's about walking towards the challenge with
a mindset that we can survive it and conquer it. And that, you know, Kiwi farming systems have always adapted to multiple different challenges from different areas. And this is no different I don't think. We will adapt and change and and farming in a hundred years time will look different to what it is now, just like it did a hundred years ago. What was interesting to me was when I looked around the group, it was the people on the land that had the most positive responses. and we are the ones t
hat bear the brunt of it financially and emotionally and physically, all this stuff. And we seem to be more positive than the people that are most disconnected from the actual soil in the hand. So I find that aspect quite interesting. Possibly because we have a bit more control over our systems I suppose. Let's do another one. 15 years ago we weren't talking about trust or social licence and 30 years ago we weren't talking about water. So, what is the blind spot topic that we're not talking abou
t today that is going to be the problem or a big problem in 10 years time? Have a look. Okay. Succession, malnutrition, food, water, robotics, aging population, blind eye and cohesion. Cheyenne, water? We haven't talked about water availability and I think that's a real issue that we're not addressing quick enough. And I think for us moving forward, if we don't do something about that now, it's gonna be really hard to farm in 20 years, let alone further down the track. Irrigation's not gonna loo
k the same. But realistically, are we gonna have drinking water and are we gonna have to create drinking water out of thin air, literally, because there's none that's available to us. I think we are, we're innovators, right? Kiwi farmers and Kiwi in general are innovators. We have that number eight wire mentality. I think we will create water. We lead the world in a lot of other ways. And I think that's something that we're gonna do. And it won't only only be for our communities and for Aotearoa
, but it'll be for the world. So that sounds pretty adaptable. You're talking about resilience there. Jon, do you think as a sector we are adapting fast enough to play in the kind of world that Cheyenne's talking about? I think a lot of the discussions that happen become political and that gets in the road of the the sectors actually just getting on with the task. And I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges is when we discuss things like He Waka [Eke Noa] and water quality they bec
ome polarising and political and we seem to spend as much time talking about it as we do about working out what we're gonna do to fix it. And that's probably a lot of the frustration I have, the energy spent on discussing it rather than doing what farms are good at just getting on with it. And we need to be careful we don't put too many barriers in place that stop the innovation that's being talked about because, you know, we are in danger of stifling that with how we are heading around regulati
on. Do you think malnutrition is gonna increase in the next 10 years? There are many people who are not getting the nutrients they need to help support growth and development and cognition and and to reach their full potential, nutrients like iron and zinc and B12, which are so important for growth and development and cognition. These things play a real role in terms of reaching our full potential. And I think we'll see that with kids sort of growing up and also just the cost of quality protein
in this country. Katie, why did you write food? Mine kind of means we're not talking about how food, as we know it could be really different in the future and what we see as food and nutrients could be really, really different. And I don't know if that conversation's been had 'cause there are young people who do already see food as something different to what perhaps our grandparents' generation saw as food. Not necessarily a bad thing. I think it's a good thing that we might have more options a
s to what is classified as food. Yeah. There's two answers at the back that deal with people. Charles, you're talking about an aging population and Nikki, you're talking about social cohesion. What are you worried about with social cohesion in New Zealand? We've always been a fairly sort of bipartisan, 'get on with it' natured people in many ways. And when I look to America and the polarisation that's occurring over there where you will get Democrats don't speak to Republicans because they're th
e enemies and therefore people have stopped listening to each other. And I just don't think that that's a great place for society because I think both sides actually lose their empathy. I think we see examples all over, all over the world where that social cohesion being split is not going to a good place. In the context of the New Zealand food and farming system, do you think we are being good kaitiaki or stewards of the land and country that we live in at the moment? In general. There's far mo
re awareness around your systems and what impacts they have. You know, we've got Overseer, we've got other tools that, you know, we can use as a guide. Why they might not be perfect, they make everyone self-aware of the impact they have and that is driving change. And it might not be the rate that people are after, but these, you know, we took 30 years to get here of pretty rapid change and we can't unwind that in five years. And, you know, we're talking about people's lives here. So you're comf
ortable to say that we are being good kaitiaki stewards at a time when upwards of 80% of freshwater fish species are extinct or threatened? Similar for seabirds, lost entire portions of forest ecosystems? I would love to say as a urban consumer, I guess like the one thing you feel might be in your sphere of control is making a change like your diet. 'Cause you're not on the farm, you can't see what's happening and you think, well, if I wanna make a difference in this kind of mess that's happenin
g, well maybe changing my diet is something that I could do. So maybe lots of people do feel empowered by being able to make their little, you know, their little choice that can make change potentially, or not, but at least they feel like they might have done something. When I think about are we being good kaitiakai I wouldn't just think about agriculture. I think about like public transport. I'd think about all these aspects which are driving the degradation of our natural environment, which we
rely on for our lives. I think we personalise issues which are not about whether or not you're a good person. They're about do we have a system that will restore the natural environment? And currently we don't. We've got systems all around us which actively degrade the natural environment and we have to, we have to just, we have to turn, we have to keep that turn happening. Do you think that's a realistic place to get to though Marnie? Is there a food production system that's gonna have no impa
ct on the environment? No, that won't happen. But you can get to a place where you're actively, I mean, like I think about the farmers that I was talking about before. You asked me what is a good farmer. I think about the farmers that over the last 20 years have actively restored their natural environment. They've measured that restoration, they've seen how things have changed and gotten better and the biodiversity's come back and they're still producing food. In some parts of the country, your
farm system fits that landscape. It totally fits that landscape. And in some places, like for example, Gisborne that we were talking about before, forestry has not fitted that landscape. It's been really the wrong land use in the wrong place. So, we need to think about what can our land handle, what can our land and water handle? How do we build productive food production systems within the natural capacity of that landscape? Let's build on that example of Gisborne Tairawhiti. Cheyenne, you've b
een on the ground there a lot post-cyclone. How do you help someone who's in that position right after getting whacked to now move through a pretty extensive land-use change to what is the appropriate land use? I mean, that's a hard ask, right? Well, you can't, you can't deny it when it is knocking down your front door, right? And the forestry that we see on the coast was planted as a result of cyclone Bola. And it was a decision that was made at the time because we thought it was the best decis
ion based on the evidence that we had. And now we have different evidence. And, for me, I think as long as we are making decisions based on the evidence that we have, and we are learning from what is going on around us, once you know better, you've got to do better. And we now know better. We know that the land use that, you know, it isn't suitable for that land. And it may have actually taken us putting forestry on that land to realise that, but something has to be done. I guess the, the silver
lining with the coast is that because so much of it is whenua Maori and access to capital isn't that easy, there is almost a pause and a chance to take a breath and really think about what happens next. And that hasn't been the case for everyone, right? People have put back in what was there before and there was a rhetoric around 'build back better', but that's building back what was there before. Whereas on the coast probably a bit more time is being taken. Once we've taken that pause, what sh
ould we be doing on the coast? What's the kind of broad brush strategy we should be applying in landscapes like that? Whatever the coast wants to do. I don't think it's... It's whatever the people in communities are. When you are mana whakahaere and you are in charge of that whenua and that and that rohe, and then they've got their own mātauranga up there as well. Each valley, you know, between Tolaga and Toko and up even into the Tauwhare Pā, they've got all of that, you know. If I can say one
thing for the coast, you let them do what they want to do because that is their place. And is that what's driving some of the fear is actually that fear that we will have a broad brush approach to telling people what land use should be in their area and how they should be using it. I think that is driving some of the fear and the division between people with expertise and in their science specialties and people who are actually on the land and and have lived on that land for a long time. I would
n't say that the coast are fearful, I would say they're standing up for themselves. Yep. If anything it is who they, who they're standing against who are fearful, and so they should be. But being resilient and adapting means changing and sometimes changing really, really fast. How good are we at change in this food and farming system? Well, your hands get forced, right? I've got two properties that flood. You have to change and adapt depending on what season's happening. The issue we have is we
can all go and change our farming systems to adapt, but if there's no market there, where is the value? I think it'll ultimately come from our farmers and growers having a higher skillset. And that's, we're seeing that generationally increase and improve. And so, you know, in one or two generations time will will a farmer have the skillset to grow kiwifruit vines, you know, have viticulture systems as well as running dry stock in certain places. Like I think that's where we're heading in, you kn
ow, like if I look at the skillset that I've got compared to my father and his grandfather, like it's always been improving and I think it'll always continue to do so. And that's where the resilience comes from, is that we will always be open to change. Let's change tack a little bit and let's talk about activism. What's probably a little bit newer is this sort of farmer-led grassroots movement, particularly around pushing back against regulatory change. We're talking about Groundswell. Jon, you
are from Southland, it's where the movement originated. Just tell us a little bit about what you feel is like the driving force behind this, this new element or this newer element in the space. I think the crux of it's come from the rate of change, I think. Certainly a chunk of the sector are like, we've gotta get on with it anyway. But there was a lot of the sector that had sort of been left to their own devices up till now. People getting time to digest it has probably been the issue I'd say,
and and like I say, it's not a it's not a unified front from the rural sector by any stretch of the imagination, but it just reflects that every part of society is fragmented at where they're at in operating in this space. And given the fact that the best science puts us at breaching 1.5 degrees, that change isn't going to stop, is it? No. And I think that's gonna be an interesting space for New Zealand going forward. We'll see people looking for a change in government to solve our problems. We
are on the journey. The questions asked might differ a little, but really the end the end goal's gonna be the same regardless of what policies are in place and what political levers are getting pulled. We are, we've started it, and we we're just gonna continue. Katie, similar question. You live in urban Auckland, you're seeing a bunch of farmers standing up for something they believe in? Yeah, I mean I don't really know much about I guess the origins of the movement. What I do know is that seem
s like farmers are having a hard time. Well that's, I mean, that is clearly happening, as you say, with regulations and having to adapt to climate. As well I guess part of it looks like resistance to change. So I think from an urban consumer you are not sure, I guess. Like, is that resisting changes that need to happen, or is it because the changes are unrealistic? Like I don't actually know. Yeah. Tim, do you consider yourself sort of aligned to the movement or...? I can see that there's clearl
y been a group of people that have become quite agitated and so it's important that they have, you know, their right to be able to speak up about that and oppose it. But I agree with everything Jon's said. It's around the rate of change. It's, yeah, farmers might feel like they've been loaded up with too much, too quickly. From a younger person's perspective, I think it sort of probably comes back to that skillset again, that possibly I'm better equipped than some of our older farmers are, or ou
r older generation, but we certainly need to make sure that we're carrying everyone along on this journey and that we don't want anyone to be left behind. And we need like wide sector buy-in to be able to make real change, for sure. Wide sector buy-in. That sounds really nice. Quite right there mate. Alright, so that's the next question. I mean, Nikki, you're a communicator. How do we get wide sector buy-in? Or better yet, why don't we have wide sector buy-in? We've been through He Waka Eke Noa
processes where we've tried to talk to everybody and, and group everyone up, along and behind division. That's had difficulty. Jon, we've agreed that things are gonna keep changing harder and faster. How do we get everyone in behind? Can we? Yeah, I don't know, because I thought He Waka Eke Noa was our best chance of actually getting some consensus to be able to move forward. But like other times when we've tried it before, you just reach a, reach a stalemate and I think it's a real loss for the
wider sector and and for New Zealand. I just think we've got groups with, everybody's got their agenda and so they want to go and get everything on their agenda, when they go into these these kind of processes, and they wanna tick it all off and we can't, we've gotta have compromise. You're not going to get everything. There are gonna be changes to our sector. for different people and and I don't know how we with He Waka Eke Noa failing, actually, I don't know how we put together another proces
s where we do get some progressiveness. If we're talking about strategies to build consensus and this need to build buy-in, I mean, Cheyenne, Charles, you work with iwi farming enterprises where you might have thousands of shareholders spread across the country. Diverse opinions. Does it work? How? To get buy-in? I think it still comes down to having leadership or having people with vision that we put there. But the pool of those people are, there's not a lot of people that we get to choose from
. So, yeah, some of those things make it tough to get the right decisions and I suppose it still comes down to trust and if we don't trust each other to make the right decisions for us, then you either gotta stand up and do it yourself, or you can sit off to the side and argue with everybody. But yeah, I don't know. I don't think you can get buy-in. I suppose consensus, we get the majority, which you know, we tend to only have about 10% of our actual landowners actually come to a meeting. So if
you've got 1700 shareholders, roughly only maybe a hundred or 50 would come to a meeting. So we aren't talking to everyone anyway. So yeah, you're just, you are having to do the best you can with what you've got, again. So, um, buy-in is not real. I don't think you can get complete buy-in. Cheyenne, anything to add to that? Yeah, I think, one thing that we never forget or that our trustees never forget is why they are actually in the room, and that's for future generations. I think that's really
important and something that we maybe missed with He Waka Eke Noa is we didn't consider why we're there and it was because our our kids' kids might not have a world to live in. And that is the harsh reality that I think we forgot and we were selfish in that room and, and I understand it, I get why we were, but as humans, we should be considering what what the future looks like for our young people. And, and that's why I think for whenua Māori entities, they get consensus because they don't forg
et why they're there. Let's talk a little bit about the wider food system that a lot of you provide kai for. So around 20% of New Zealanders live in some kind of food insecurity, that's one in five. It's slightly higher for kids. Around 8% of our national healthcare budget is allotted to basically diet and lifestyle choices or diet-related diseases, rather. So we do have some major issues around food and and health in New Zealand. So when I talk about those statistics, one in five people living
in food insecurity, Tim as someone who produces food, how does that make you feel? Yeah, it's quite obvious that there's something broken a little bit here. I think when you've got those sort of statistics and then you've also got, from a farmer's perspective, like in the Waikato this is coming season, 80% of farmers are predicted to make a loss. So there's some real disparity there and it's obvious that it comes down to the supply chain, isn't it? That we're losing too much value there, connect
ing with our customers more or less. So it's sad because as a food producer, the main reason you're in it is to create kai for people to eat. You know? And, and that's the biggest driver that I have is that I love being able to say that our farming system creates enough beef to feed five-and-a half-thousand Kiwis. But there's obviously issues that we need to solve. What upsets me is that we're so disconnected from our consumers and that it feels like we're kept apart on purpose. I would love to
be able to just sell my meat directly to the people who want to buy it. Some people will say, well, that's possible. And we've got examples around New Zealand of people who are doing it, but it's almost impossible. Like it is so difficult to get past the regulations. And I think that that is for the benefit of supermarkets, that's for the benefit of our meat companies. They don't want us to be able to cut them out. And I think that's to the detriment of our industry. It's to the detriment of soc
ial license too. Because imagine if Mikki could ring me up and say, Nikki, can I buy a lamb off you? Mm, amazing. What pleasure that would be for her to come up with her husband on a Saturday and me to be able to give her meat that I've grown. And, it's something that I think that is a systematic change that we should make. We used to do this stuff. We had town supply milk, people had dairy farms on the fringes of town who supplied town milk. That wasn't that long ago, you know, it was in my gen
eration. So what has happened between now and then? And you've got, you know, you've got some of our farms, really large farms who produce a lot of lambs. We may not be the key person to be able to produce a lamb for someone in town, but there might be a guy who's, you know, closer to town operating 200-odd hectares, mum-and-dad farm, you know, the opportunity for him. How do we make that opportunity for them? Because for big trusts like some of ours where you're producing 50,000 lambs I really
don't have time to take one out to sell to the neighbour. You know, like you just, it's a different beast. So, I think there's gotta be a way and we've got all this blimmin' technology in the world to help us sell stuff to people. You know, you can get blimmin', you know, a coat for your cat on Temu in a day. You know, like, why are we in this position? Well, why can't we get a label on our meat at the supermarket with the picture of the people that grew that meat? We've got the technology there
. We could just do that so easily. But there are other players in the system that it's just not to their benefit. But I also think what you said, Dan, about how much money is put towards prevention of diseases of sort of diet and lifestyle. And I think that's a major issue, right? Government, and doesn't matter which government you're talking about, in my lifetime have been not at all interested in focusing on nutrition, which is obviously the area that I'm, you know, passionate about. And if, I
mean, people talk a lot about taxes on food and GST obviously has come up most recently, the idea of taking it off fruit and vegetables, which would've been ineffective and research has been very clear on that actually. But what about subsidies on food items like meat that contain the minerals that we're lacking? You know, like iron and B12 and zinc are three pretty obvious ones, which a lot of us are low in, like at that population level. Or at least the most recent survey showed us. So subsid
ies can be a little bit of a triggering word, emotive word for a lot of food producers, particularly considering sort of the the trauma that we went through with the 80s. I mean subsidies for us, the consumers actually. Yeah, I like that Mikki's talking about a subsidy on meat as opposed to a tax on meat, which is what we hear about sometimes now. I mean, Charles, Tim, you guys are food producers, work in the red meat sector. Subsidy? You look at the supermarket, like I, at the end of the day, t
here's a functional problem in our society where people can't afford kai. That's the problem. It's gone up 12%, 15% last year. Cheyenne, you work very closely with Meat the Need, a farmer-led charity to put meat protein into food banks. Do you think that the farming sector is a place where that kind of change can keep coming from? Yeah, I think Meat the Need offers a solution and in the long term, if the issues that we're facing change, Meat the Need should be made redundant. We shouldn't need M
eat the Need. The reason we have Meat the Need is because farmers have always donated to their communities. Meat the Need is a way of streamlining it. That's all we offer really is a streamlined process. And I think going forward there still needs to be a change for us to to really solve the problem. It is a Band-Aid currently. Absolutely. I think as well, you just said it, like "farmers solve the problem". At the moment that's up to the farmers to sort of do that and I just sort of feel like th
ere's gotta be some slack cut for the farmers, you know. No, I'm agreeing with you Cheyenne. Just like what can be done at the government level that actually might be part of that solution that you are sort of looking for, and that we are looking for, because it isn't just the lowest sociodemographic sort of people in society. It's like "middle New Zealand" as well, you know, you often hear that too. Everyone's feeling it. It's regulation ultimately that I think is is strangling this a little bi
t and that it's no longer fit for purpose. That it was brought in at a period of time where we needed food safety more than anything. But I think that we have the technology now to start to remove some of those barriers and put the onus on the producers to say, look, if you can prove it, why can't you sell it yourself type thing. And that's where we need this sort of wheel to turn backwards a bit, I think. I don't think we have a long-term strategy for what we want New Zealand to look like in a
hundred years or 200 years, whether it's food or energy, any of our sectors. And that's right, we don't have a food strategy as a nation. And I completely understand people are developing that at the minute. Probably not enough of us are part of those discussions, but it's great that there's something happening because it needs to. There's things we could all get behind, you know, that's one of the things I think I could easily get behind and support because it's doing good for our own people. Y
ou know, if we fed our children better, the level of education will just lift so much higher that they could be the person or they could be the cohort of children from 2023 are the ones that solve cancer, solve climate. Like, it's real. Like I don't think we give enough kudos to the fact that we don't know every bloody thing and we've gotta let someone else do it. So I'm all for that. Let's talk a little bit about urban-rural connection. We're gonna do a quick-fire stats quiz. So researchers ask
ed urban New Zealanders if they regularly experience the sights, smells, and sounds of life on the farm. What portion said yes? So researchers asked urban New Zealanders if they regularly experienced the sight, sounds and smells of farm life. What portion said yes? Wow. Okay. 8%. The answer is 32%. Oh wow. 32% of Kiwis get out on farm pretty frequently. Look at that. The urban girls got it. Look at that. Not bad. Not bad. Charles, you said 8%. I don't see many urban people in real life. Maybe if
you looked at Benneydale, no one comes there. Who had the highest, what'd you have Marnie? I had 40%. 40%. That's pretty good. So a third of the population, we've got a third of the population who get a bit of dirt under their fingernails. Do we think that's enough? No. Pretty resounding from the urban person. Why not? Because, I don't know. It's a nice thing to be out in like nature and connecting with greenery or mountains or bush. When you live in an urban center, you do have to go out of yo
ur way to get that connection. So, I mean, obviously I work a normal work week and then if I want to in my weekends, I have to make the effort to go out somewhere to like, you know, find that connection somewhere else because you're not getting it as much in the city. We take it for granted, I think sometimes, being on farm, we are breathing fresh air all the time and and I definitely think we take it for granted. I don't really want too many more coming out with all due respect. It's, I don't w
ant to go into the city either. Yeah. So I'm like, you do what you're good at and I'll do what I'm good at. We'll just keep our distance. I think it's quite interesting as well that the people on the land sort of thought it was lower than the people who were in town. That's possibly a perception that we've got there that we sort of think that they're further, disconnected from us than what they actually are. And maybe if you farmed in Pukekohe or or Benneydale, you just don't see people. Like we
just don't see anybody. And I can understand for some urban people it's not always by choice. Some physically can't get out of the city. All right, well then let's talk a little bit about this idea of the need to build more connection and build more trust in the food and farming system. Cheyenne, we've been talking about telling our story better for a decade. Are we telling our story better? Yeah, I think we are telling it better. I think there's definitely room for improvement, but the challen
ge I see is that we are telling our story to each other. We're telling it within a echo chamber of other farmers and other people in our industry. And we're not doing a good enough job of of letting other, whether it be urban communities, other communities, learn about what we are doing. And I don't wanna say we're telling them a story 'cause no one likes to be told anything. I think we need to take them on a journey. What does that look like? That's a good question. A conversation. A two-way co
nversation. You know, telling a story is one thing, but having a conversation with someone is another. Jon, you founded Ag Proud, which is all about going into, or a part of it was about going into towns, having a barbecue and having one-on-one conversations. What kind of feedback did you get from, you know, urban Kiwis that you plucked off the street to talk to about farming? Yeah, so we made them pretty easy targets by giving them kai for a start. So, um, at the start of the line, you'd be tal
king to someone who's getting the bread bun and you know, this is what we're about. Happy to answer any question, you know, this is warts-and-all farming. There are things we can improve on, but there are reasons why we have to do things for for the structure that we're in. So, happy to answer any questions. And it always generally kick off, you know, why why are you ruining our water? You'd have a conversation and by the time they got that juicy bit of meat in their mouth, they were sort of tha
nking you and on their way and smiling. So it was, look, I think half it was a conversation. The other half was the fact that it was it was sharing conversation over kai, which I think is really important. I don't think we structure enough around that. Yeah. You know, I think sometimes telling the story becomes a sort of, not always, but sometimes it becomes a sort of shield. Like we have to tell our story so that we don't, you know, so that we don't have to face some of the harder things that p
eople are talking to us about. Not always, but sometimes it is. It's kind of like we don't want to be criticised and so we need to sort of tell a positive story. But stories can have struggles in them too. They don't have to just be positive. Stories can have triumph over adversity as well. And they can have, um, they can have like a real roadblock that our heroes have to push through and get through. And I think sometimes we, sometimes the story means that we can't actually talk about the issue
s that we have to face, and we have to tell a story that's gonna take us where we wanna go rather than just go, no, but I'm a good person. There's no question! People are good people. That's not the question. The question is, is that story taking us where we need to go? And is it helping us to get through those challenges? Or is it just kind of holding us in in the same place. And we need to start with what we have in common. I think when you can find that common ground, those common values that
we share, then that's what we get to build upon. Like we've got differences, right? But if we start with what we have in common, this is what we agree, and then we can look at our differences and figure out which are the ones that we need to tackle first on the journey that we're going on. And I think that's what builds trust is that being upfront with the areas that we know have been neglected and that we we're striving to improve on them, but but telling the story that yeah, things have have
been negative and that, yeah, not every business is perfect, but we're all trying to head in the right direction. I think that sort of honesty is what will build trust long term. When Marnie used the word distress to describe how she feels about climate change, that had a really massive impact on me. Not that I, I don't think of you as an activist, I think of you as a campaigner, but the emotion that you have around climate change and around water quality, that had such a big impact on me to rem
ember that you are a person with feelings and that this is coming from a really genuine place of wanting to make the world better. I think I like, I was definitely not in sort of like a food and farming space and I've sort of like moved more into that area and I used to have a lot more negative views. Like, I'll be honest, I've definitely in the last maybe two years of, like, getting more involved in, I guess with people who work in the industry. And I've talked a lot more to farmers, like conve
rsations face-to-face. Whether that's going to like a hui with other farmers or some of the leadership groups that I've got involved with, and my opinion's definitely changed. I wanna, Katie, so your perception of farming prior to starting engagement with farming, what do you think gave you those perceptions? Oh, good question. Um, probably media. Documentaries, so Netflix documentaries and media I would say the main two things, but also I was kind of interested in food industry and so I was not
icing there was a lot of things in the wider food industry, not farming, but I was unhappy with some of the things that were happening in food industry and the way the food system worked. And obviously farming is part of that system, but it's not the whole thing. It's only one aspect. And so I think some of that gets conflated because there's a lot of things, it's very complex and it's very nuanced and there's a lot of things that are interconnected. So yeah. But mostly media and things like Net
flix documentaries really do influence people's opinion. And I should reiterate that the research did show that there is an absolute wealth of trust they're building on. It's changed a little bit in the last couple of years, but by and large, we still very much feel like we're in this together. Alright. And I think we've got time for maybe one last question. In one word, describe the farmer of the future. One word. Lovely. Yes. Whoops. Okay. In one word, describe farmer of the future. Innovative
, responsive, Māori, essential, yellow, diverse, innovative, and adaptive. Alright. There's definitely a couple of themes. Māori? Māori not as the race, but the word Māori means natural. So that's what I see the farmer of the future. Bilingual. We're not divisive, we're not Pākehā and Māori, we are natural. When we farm, that's who we are as a place, as a New Zealand farmer. Cool. Mine's very similar. I couldn't come up with a word that describes it. And so yellow is what I saw. Um, so I saw a f
armer that was hopeful, that was innovating, that essentially was everything else here. Diverse? Yeah. I hope our farmers look, look different to what they look like now and that we can embrace that change. Anything to add? Innovative, Nikki? We're problem solvers, right? And so we'll just keep on solving these problems and it's, yeah, It's great. Well, team, kia ora. Thank you. I think there was some really, really cool stuff in there. Hopefully we push the conversation forward. Thank you for b
eing part of the people's panel on food and farming. I encourage you or anyone watching to delve into the research 'cause this is what it talks about, is how we talk through hard issues, constructively, hear each other out, and move forward together. I feel like we've done a little bit of that today. So kia ora. Thanks for the opportunity.
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