CEO, Mike Brown's update 1 September

First impressions as NZVeg Chief Executive 

Having just finished my fourth week in my new role with the New Zealand Vegetable Council (NZVeg), I can certainly say I know a lot more about vegetable growing than I did on day one!  Coming from the more monolithic wine sector, I have a greater appreciation for how complex the vegetable sector and horticulture, in general, are.

I have been made to feel very welcome by Horticulture New Zealand and the staff that now sit under NZVeg; I have also been very impressed with how hard-working and capable Dinah Cohen, Kazi Talaska, Ben Hancock, Marta Kozera, Andrew Bristol, Daniel Sutton and Catherine James are. I feel very fortunate that such a bright team has been assembled around this combined project. 

James Kuperus has done a lot of the hard yards in orchestrating this coming together. Change is never straightforward, so I appreciate what he has achieved with the collaboration to date. James is with us until the end of September, so I am very keen to download all his institutional knowledge in this transition period.

Moving to Wellington

For the moment, my wife Tania and I are living in Nelson, but we will be moving to Wellington in the new year. While in the meantime I aim to work out of Wellington Monday to Thursday each week, the reality has been I have been spending a lot of time out in the regions meeting with growers. This is my first and most important task over the next two months: understanding grower issues and sentiment from the ground up.  So far I have been to the Horowhenua, Manawatu and Canterbury, and I will soon make it to Pukekohe, Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay. Toward the end of October, I will start to distill what I have learned into a strategy for NZVeg, with the help of our very able team.

The launch of the NZ Vegetable Sector Manifesto at Parliament at the end of June was a cogent statement to government and opposition parties that there are some key issues of concern to vegetable growers – Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, access to offshore-approved chemistry and biologicals, energy certainty for our covered crop growers, and the need to encourage vegetable consumption among New Zealanders. 

I’m aware of two other issues, as I talk with growers, around the ability to access gene-edited seed now the European Union (EU) has changed its stance, and supply chain behaviours; these are possibly the more fraught issues to deal with. 

Within all of this, our growers want the ability to invest with confidence – it is telling that half of you are unsure if your business will live past the next ten years. Reduced regulatory burden, controlled cost input and adequate margins are commercial necessities.

Clarity provided by the Government heartening

It was heartening that the Government has now given some clarity around Plan Change 1 (PC1) in the Waikato and Plan Change 2 (PC2) in the Horowhenua / Manawatu. Secondary legislation downstream of the RMA replacement bills will now be keenly watched for further beneficial outcomes. Dealing with regional councils aside, we should always be aware of social licence and how we create value and goodwill in our communities.  All I have seen to date indicates we are doing a pretty good job on that front.

I was able to thank Agriculture Minister, Todd McClay personally regarding PC1 and PC2 at the Young Grower of the Year Final in Cromwell this last weekend. I also expressed to him the importance of domestic food security for New Zealand, which is sometimes under-appreciated as we focus on export growth.  Vegetables matter and the Government would be remiss to ignore the concerns of our vegetable growers. Beyond our borders though, we can also see the opportunity for growth for vegetables with the right mix of market insights, market access, government assistance and product innovation. NZVeg along with Potatoes NZ is committing to promoting ambitious export growth in the Government’s target of the doubling of export value by 2034.

Please reach out

I look forward to communicating with you each month within the NZVeg newsletter and hopefully meeting many of you in your regions over the time ahead.  Feel free to reach out any time though. My email is Mike.Brown@NZVeg.co.nz and my phone number is 021 433 442.