As two unsubsidised food exporters, New Zealand and Australia have the opportunity to work together to push their agricultural stories to the big powers of the world, the special representative for Australian agriculture Su McCluskey says.
McCluskey was part of a discussion at the Red Meat Sector Conference in Wellington with her counterpart Hamish Marr, NZ’s special agricultural trade envoy.
“I’m here in New Zealand saying, ‘How do we collaborate?’ I was in Canada saying, ‘How do we collaborate?’ We’re a big country, but we’re also small nation in terms of what impact we have in export markets, but we can collaborate with other like minds to actually help to get that message across, and then domestically it is sharing what I’m hearing,” McCluskey said.
“I always make it clear that I’m not there to tell businesses what to do. They will make their own decisions, but, like New Zealand, we’re not subsidised, so profitability and productivity is absolutely key for us.
“So I think about what’s the value proposition for our farmers, why it’s important that we actually are engaged in the debate around sustainability and what it needs to be on farm, how knowing your baseline actually helps you to manage your farm and your business better, and looking through a risk lens, ‘What’s the cost of not doing this?’”
Marr said as relatively minor players in the global food trade, New Zealand and Australia need to find out how they can add value to the massive domestic food producers in the likes of the United States and the European Union.
“We’re not big players in the world and we haven’t got the ability to actually upset markets domestically. We haven’t got the horsepower and production to actually upset markets. So my message always is, ‘What can we do as a trading nation to support your market so that we can add value to your own domestic market?’”
Marr said a recent trip to the US highlighted this, with big cattle farmers there telling him how much they liked the fact that NZ beef is adding value to their own businesses at the moment.
McCluskey warned that Australasia mustn’t go down the same regulatory road as the European Union, where environmental lobbies have captured decision-makers and left farmers unable to influence policy.
“For example, in the Netherlands only a few weeks ago I was talking to Dutch farmers. They are as concerned as we are about deforestation because they can’t comply – it falls on deaf ears. So, so we’ve got to work with like minds.”
