Wake up New Zealand agribusiness, real changes in societal thinking in Europe, North America andAsia is clearly showing that the ordinary consumer really wants to eat sustainably producedfood.
Many sustainability requirements, often different and often driven from a retailer’s perceivedmarketing advantage, may seem outlandish to us, but it is clear the next industrial revolution iscoming to the world – the sustainable revolution.
A recent
The world’s piecemeal approach to sustainability being adopted by businesses comes with anumber of significant concerns, including:
•European retailers (in particular) that have, and continue to respond to pressure to increaselocal sourcing on the grounds of enhancing the sustainability of their supply chains could be havinga detrimental environmental and economic effect through their actions. (e.g. the food miles argumentdoesn’t stack up comparing NZ versus UK production)
•Overseas retailers’ requirements for sustainability are at best based on scientific workundertaken overseas and at worst are based on an initiative that a marketing department believeswill play well with consumers. The need for producers, and the wider NZ industry, to have regularand comprehensive dialogue with customers to ensure that they understand our production systems andthe science driving them has never been more important. We need to demonstrate the sustainability ofour agricultural systems to customers to mitigate the risk of unilateral measures being imposed onour producers, increasing cost without a demonstratable benefit to the environment, and it isimportant that relevant NZ science is brought into these discussions
•The increasing separation between urban and rural populations means the realities ofagricultural production become ever more difficult for townies to accept. Retailer brands are beingdesigned to minimise being linked to the more ‘unsavoury’ aspects of agricultural production inthe media. The onus falls on the rural sector to ensure that they are engaging and educating theurban population on where their food comes from to mitigate the impact of incremental compliancerequirements
The report says there is likely to be a time when a tipping point is reached which will see thesustainability of a product being given equal weighting to more traditional buying factors.