NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2023: As we bid farewell to another remarkable year in agritech, we reflect on our progress and achievements. Our community has reached new heights this year through a tapestry of member events, bringing us together to exchange ideas and foster innovation. This work builds on years of curated conversations between thinkers from across our ecosystem grappling with similar challenges in fostering growth.
Through these conversations, our practice has been identifying the capabilities needed to enable growth and creating the relationships and networks for them to connect. We’ve developed international partnerships and celebrated the emerging shoots of collaborative practice across the industry.
The Agritech Industry Transformation Plan (Agritech ITP) context has enabled much of this work. In forming our new Government, ACT’s policy on public expenditure resulted in the new Minister for Economic Development placing a ‘stop work notice’ on all Industry Transformation Plans (ITP) so they can be re-assessed.
Any opportunity for a conscious review and reflection is good. We also know that the relationships and networks formed in recent years have let the genie out of the bottle and changed how we communicate and interact forever. The Agritech ITP stands alone as the first and arguably most dynamic of these initiatives due to the readiness of our ecosystem and the global context of insatiable demand for improved food systems.
With their strong business focus, we’re confident our new Government partners will recognise the strategic imperative of building relationships and networks as an investment in legitimacy and better outcomes. Our collective ability to set conditions for international partnerships and higher levels of sector collaboration on bigger goals is critical to the emergence of more of what we all want to see.
In 2024, we will continue to celebrate and facilitate the new behaviours that embrace the power of decentralised ecosystems (for example, not contained by our isolated geography), which are collaborative and scalable — with relationships being a critical medium of this future. We welcome the shared work of our many partners who broker, facilitate and catalyse this work inside and outside government. We will continue to connect the government to this broader ecosystem of change makers.
On behalf of the team at AgriTechNZ, we thank you for your engagement and support and look forward to an even more impactful 2024. We wish you all the best for the festive season and the holidays.
Kia maiea tō rā
Brendan
Exective Director, AgriTechNZ