ASB Perspective 2025: Is creativity the key to food producer success?

Just how creative will our thinking need to be in the transformation of New Zealand’s food producers? This was the topic taken to the panel at ASB Perspective 2025, part of NZ Agrifood Week 2018. This breakfast-time round table featured some of the primary industries top female leaders, from Fonterra to farmers, offering their insights into the various challenges being faced and the potential ways we can ensure our future successes.  

As several panellists pointed out, embracing creativity is easier said than done. Regulations both at home and overseas can stifle creativity, as can the actual physical and commercial limitations many producers come up against. Too often producers can come forward with an idea that fails to take into account the current industry frameworks, which can result in greater investments of time, money and effort. Dr. Abby Thompson, CEO of FoodHQ, says “it’s all very well coming up with a novel product and an edgy brand… but that’s a long way from something that is functional, safe, meets all of the national and international regulations and fits within the clients budget.”

Where creativity may have the most value is in the telling of our story. Consumers value traceability and transparency, so being able to present the story of farming practices and showing what actually goes into our products could go a long way to building that trust. Technology has given us the tools to tell these stories in interesting new ways, as entrepreneur Chanelle O’Sullivan demonstrates through her Facebook group Farming Mums NZ and her virtual reality business Virtual Insight. “We’re really in a fantastic space right now where we are able to actually bring people to the farm through virtual reality.”

Beyond just the means of telling these stories, we need to get better at tailoring them to our audiences. “I think we’re bad at telling the story for a number of reasons,” says chair and KPMG Farm Enterprise Specialist Julia Jones. “One is we think that New Zealand is the story and it’s not, it’s a platform for many stories. And secondly we tell the same story to anyone and we hope they’ll listen. We need a relevant story for a relevant audience.” 

Our current agricultural sector is based largely on a model of scarcity, and as General Manager Fonterra Venture Komal Mistry asks “if we were in a world where everything was abundant… what would that mean for business?” A shift is already in progress, and our stories will need to reflect this. Consumers are increasingly looking towards plant based alternatives and companies invest in vegetarian steaks as meat substitutes are set to outpace meat sales.^{1 “}We’ve got a huge popularity in meat free products and synthetic products. So I think establishing a place for us by using creativity is really core here,” says Lynley Wyeth, Spring Valley Enterprises Director. “I think this story is worth telling, over and over again. I think it’s how we get creative about telling that story is probably what’s missing.”

In the meantime, we also need to ensure our attitudes actively encourage creativity, and that could mean taking a long hard look in the mirror. Jessica Bensemann, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, suggests that we can be overly defensive, which could discourage those thinking outside the box. “I think to be creative it really does require people to be quite brave, to challenge that status quo and what’s happening there.” We may not like to acknowledge our failures, but in doing so risk ignoring what valuable learning experiences they can be. As Jones notes, “we don’t celebrate failure enough and then we beat the crap out of those who succeed. Let’s celebrate both. When you learn and change and evolve, it’s fantastic. It’s such a great thing.”

You can watch the full panel discussion here.

1.       https://home.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/nz/pdf/June/agri-agenda-2017-kpmg-nz.pdf