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It will do this by accepting a proposal from leading farming organisations, including Dairy NZ and Beef & Lamb New Zealand, to give them the next five years to develop a farm-level pricing mechanism separate from New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). Farmers will pay no additional levies or charges in the meantime. If this new scheme is not established however, agriculture will be folded into the ETS by default in 2025.

In short, the ball is now firmly in our farmers court.

Agritech New Zealand stands 100% behind the country’s farming community. The technology being developed by our members is designed to support increased productivity whilst maximising sustainable on-farm practice. This extends beyond the ETS and includes reducing the impact of poor nutrient application and management and its potential for run-off into our waterways.

Farming’s license to operate is real. Consumers around the world are becoming more sensitive towards climate change and the size of agriculture’s carbon footprint. The New Zealand farming organisations & representatives that have been working with government are fully aware of this. And so are New Zealand farmers on the ground. What they need over the next five year’s are solutions that will assist them address the challenge set out by the government last week. It’s an agenda that our members are keen to support.

As I write this post, the all of government agritech taskforce is considering a series of actions and initiatives designed to assist scale New Zealand’s agritech sector. It is a priority for the government’s Industry Transformation Plan (ITP) first announced back on 2 July in Parliament. The ITP programme is designed help New Zealand’s agritech sector develop the technologies necessary to assist farmers meet some of the major challenges they face.

Regulation goes so far. At the end of the day it will be the technology and innovation that New Zealand’s agriculture sector is known for that will enable our farmers meet the farm-level emissions pricing scheme that government and industry signed up for last week. Agriculture has, is, and will continue to be a major contributor to our national economy. Championing that cause and our hardworking farmers and growers is why we do this.

Building New Zealand’s agritech capability is a prerequisite to strengthening our position in the world’s agritech marketplace. To support this, Palmerston North based Sprout Accelerator has announced that pre-registrations for its 2020 Accelerator programme are now open. Sprout plays an invaluable role within New Zealand’s agritech ecosystem. For those unfamiliar with its activities, Sprout, a member of Agritech New Zealand, is a six month business accelerator designed for the next generation of agritech and future food companies. By helping develop a pipeline of new emerging agritech companies, the Sprout Accelerator is helping build the country’s longer term agritech capability.

Now that I am back in New Zealand, my immediate focus has turned to the All of Government agritech taskforce and its Industry Transformation Plan (ITP). On Monday, I will be attending a hui at Te Taiwhenua o Heretaunga in Hastings to enable Māori whānau, hapū, iwi and industry to provide feedback on the Government’s draft agritech strategy document.

Proposals for planned actions and initiatives under this draft document will then be submitted to Government Ministers. A number of Government agencies are currently supporting different streams within the Plan’s strategy. Agritech ITP will be the first sector plan to be formally submitted and I will update, more fully on what this might look like in next month’s newsletter.

These are hugely significant times for the country’s agritech sector. Whether onshore or offshore, by working together, we can continue to build and scale our capacity to increase export sales, as well as secure the adoption by farmers and growers of agri-technology at home.

Join us as we accelerate the opportunity.

Ngā mihi,

Peter Wren-Hilton
Executive Director
Agritech New Zealand

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#NZAgritechStory #PoweredByPlace

NZ government agencies (MBIE, MPI, NZTE, Callaghan Innovation, NZVIF & MFAT) have combined to develop an agritech strategy that supports the growth of the New Zealand agritech sector.

You can view information on the draft strategy here.

The wānanga will take place at Te Taiwhenua o Heretaunga, 821 Orchard Road, Hastings on Monday 14 October from 10.30am – 12.30pm.

You can view the Eventbrite page at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-new-zealand-government-agritech-taskforce-strategy-workshop-tickets-72007286733

RSVP: wananga@haunuitech.com 

In August 2018, Agritech New Zealand signed a strategic partnership agreement with Western Growers, the largest producers of fresh produce in North America.

A key focus of the agreement was on the #1 challenge facing many US growers of specialty crops. Labor. The lack of and the cost of.

Several specialty crop sectors are under real pressure. Asparagus is one of them. A number of growers have already set up shop south of the border where growing conditions and the availability of labor are conducive to asparagus growing. Speaking to growers in California, it became quickly apparent that unless more automation could be introduced into the field, particularly harvesting, the industry in the US probably had no more than 3 years to survive. Labor issues were so serious that growing asparagus was becoming an uneconomic activity.

I was aware of the work of Professor Mike Duke and a team of researchers at the University of Waikato. They were working on developing a prototype asparagus harvester. A meeting with Mike in Hamilton and calls with Dennis Donohue at the Western Growers Technology and Innovation Center in Salinas, connected the two. Mike travelled to Salinas to meet affected growers and a few weeks later, the Waikato prototype harvester was being trialed on US asparagus grower properties. The University of Waikato’s commercialisation partner, Robotics Plus, supported the initiative. A major template for future engagement had been established.

The video below tells the story of this unique partnership. It demonstrates the significance of the strategic partnership agreement signed last year and provides an insight into how New Zealand agritech technology can help address global challenges. The good news is that not only can we build new channels to global markets, we can also deploy these technologies at home to help New Zealand growers scale their operations.

https://vimeo.com/360661164

We are grateful to New Zealand Trade & Enterprise for supporting the build of the story video.

One of the key findings of our visit was that this growth is being supported by significant public and industry investment into dairy research. On Thursday, the delegation (pictured above) visited Teagasc at Moorepark, just outside Fermoy in County Cork. Teagasc – the Agriculture and Food Development Authority – is the national body providing integrated research, advisory and training services to the agriculture and food industry and rural communities.

We learnt a lot more about the Irish dairy landscape. This included a visit to the Teagasc robotic dairy farm. This is automating a significant amount of on-farm process. It’s driving down costs and the cows looked happy enough to me. They get to choose when they go to the milking shed and there, the robots get to work. Not a person in sight.

Driving much of this research is VistaMilk, the SRI Research Centre for precision-based dairy production and processing. The research programme has been designed to develop new, and advance existing electronic monitoring and actuation technologies to transform Ireland’s dairy sector into a global leader in sustainable agritech. It will specifically address pasture-based dairy production, improved processability and the generation of novel, higher-value-added products. In addition to the creation of new sensing and actuation paradigms, particular focus will be given to developing state-of-the-art analytical techniques applied to largescale, sensor data-sets delivered by advanced network and communication technologies.

The programme is supported by 28 industry partners. Through what appears to be a strategy of highly-interconnected innovative scientific ventures and disciplines, VistaMilk will develop and deploy scientific solutions, informed by sophisticated data analytical approaches, to support Ireland’s dairy sector.

It’s time for the New Zealand dairy sector to take note.

Ordinarily, I would leave it that. Not this time however. In order to engage more directly with the Irish agritech sector, we are looking at ways to deepen the connection. Next week, I am speaking to the team at DogPatch Labs in Dublin to test the case for a formal landing pad for New Zealand agritech companies seeking to enter the Irish market. The delegation visited DogPatch Labs on Friday and we were all impressed. Finistere Ventures, a Farm2050 partner, are based on-site, as are representatives from Irish agritech heavyweight, Alltech. I visited the facility last December during the AgTech Nexus Europe conference. Impressed then. Impressed now.

I’ll provide an update on next week’s talks. Ireland offers New Zealand agritech companies similar pastoral farming systems to those back home. Its dairy sector is expanding rapidly. It also offers a dual hemisphere opportunity to speed up R&D and in-market field trials. It’s an opportunity that we will seek to leverage through increased collaboration and cooperation.

In short, we’ll be back.

Yesterday, NZTE posted the New Zealand Agritech story campaign assets on our website, www.agritechnz.org.nz. This includes video, images and case studies. I have been working closely with the NZTE creative team for the past nine months, helping to provide industry insights into its production and I’m delighted that Agritech New Zealand is taking ownership of the story. Going forward we will continue to work in partnership with NZTE, as we develop more collateral for the sector. Use of these assets by New Zealand agritech entities is available license-free. It’s our aim to provide assets that our agritech businesses can use to promote their own products or services. Check out the links on our website to view and access these assets.

At last week’s meeting of the Agritech New Zealand Executive Council, we agreed a draft Heads of Agreement with the Precision Agriculture Association of New Zealand (PAANZ) which will see both organisations partner into a single entity. The PAANZ Board had approved the draft the previous week. I look forward to working with the Chair and Board of PAANZ as we progress the process. It will see the emergence of a strong unified organisation that is not only focused on the scaling of the agritech sector but also on the adoption of that technology by farmers and growers in New Zealand. It’s a powerful combination.

Since the last newsletter, have spent much of the past four weeks working with the Government’s agritech strategy task force as we have sought industry input into the Government’s Industry Transformation Plan for the sector. Over 300 delegates attended our workshops in Auckland, Tauranga, Hamilton, Palmerston North and Lincoln. Our next steps are to aggregate the input received from these workshops and assist the taskforce present a list of action and initiative recommendations to government. Despite a tight deadline, we are aiming to deliver these recommendations to Ministers by the end of next month.

Before flying to Ireland, I spent Thursday and Friday last week at the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum (ANZLF) event in Auckland. This is the annual gathering of government ministers and business leaders from both countries. I had been approached by ANZLF in May with a request to develop an agritech focused proposal for the Forum. I spoke to a number of ecosystem colleagues across the Tasman and on Thursday we launched the Australian New Zealand Agritech Council. It’s designed to promote the trans-Tasman region as an agritech hub to the global venture capital community. You can learn more here: www.anzagritech.org.

As we approach the final quarter of 2019, there is no sign of any slow down in activity. Work has already begun on the evokeAG conference in Melbourne in February and the MobileTECH conference in April. We continue to work with our Government partners to raise the profile of the sector both at home and offshore.

As they say in Ireland, Tabharfaidh an obair chrua na torthaí isteach (The hard work will deliver the results).

Ngā mihi,

Peter Wren-Hilton
Executive Director
Agritech New Zealand

How does the agritech story work?

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The future of sustainable farming is being showcased in a trial on Kowhai Farm. Learn more about the Internet of Things at the 2019 IoT Half-Day Conference on 3 October in Auckland.

Explore business opportunities in Singapore with networking events on 19 September in Tauranga and 20 September in Auckland. Join Ag Innovations Bootcamp on 1 October in Hamilton.

Medicine, science and tech! New Zealand’s first medicinal cannabis summit, MedCan 2020 has been announced by BioTechNZ. Register your interest for the 19 March, 2020 event.

Investors in New Zealand’s early stage capital markets are being invited to comment on policy settings for the new Venture Capital Fund. The Angel Association’s annual founders survey closes 20 September.

Ahead of the APEC SME Summit 2019, 14 November in Santiago de Chile, applications are now open for Inventing the Future 2019 startup challenge. Entries close 29 September.

Other closing dates; 27 September for Deloitte’s Corporate Entrepreneur Awards, 29 September for Inventing the Future 2019, 4 October for Callaghan’s RFP for incubators and 25 October for our study tour of China. 

Attend the Future of 3DP in MedTech on 1 October in Christchurch. Advancing Women in Technical Industries and Roles is 25 November in Auckland. Learn more about the current state of women in tech, returnships and leadership opportunities.

TechLeaders recently met with Minister Jones to discuss how to accelerate digital advancement in provincial New Zealand. Explore their insights and read the briefing paper here. Watch Techweek TV on demand; automation in agritech, aerospace and agritech and more.

Standards New Zealand is looking for digital entrepreneurs with ideas for how to use standards content in new ways to make it more useful for those who put them into practice. Learn more.

Discover how AI can help New Zealand in the newly published report Towards Our Intelligent Future. Plus read Interactive Aotearoa – driving growth and wellbeing through interactive media.

Yesterday, I provided an update on Day 1 at the Irish Ploughing Championships in Carlow. The official attendance stood at 105,000. Looking at the crowds today, I expect that number to be significantly larger. It’s been hot once again and just crazy busy.

Yesterday, I shared some of my takeaways of Ireland’s agri-business landscape. Today, I want to talk about the kiwis who are here and killing it; the investors we have met and the opportunities for New Zealand agritech’s sector.

Any offshore New Zealand agritech mission is a sum of its people. The delegation to the UK and Ireland have been superb. Great ambassadors for the country, they have engaged every step of the way. Hat therefore tipped to these great NZ representatives.

• AbacusBio
• AgResearch
• Agritech New Zealand
• Auckland Uniservices
• Callaghan Innovation
• Fonterra
• GPS-it
• Lincoln Agritech
• MilkTechNZ
• Next Farm
• NZ National Fieldays
• Paysauce
• Rezare Systems
• RiverWatch
• Trev Holdings
• Zero Home Farm

As well as the formal delegation, we have met independent NZ exhibitors from Figured, Gallagher, Hansen, Kaiwaka, LIC, Saber, Tru-Test, Waikato Milking Systems and Yardmaster. Add in Ambassador Brad Burgess and the team of in-market supporters from MFAT & NZTE. All up, we have over 45 kiwis on-site. (The photo above shows some of this team inside the NZ Pavilion this morning).

Collectively we are ‘Powered by Place’. At an NZTE breakfast reception this morning, we formally launched the NZ Agritech Story. We were joined by leading Irish agribusiness players. It’s taken 8 months of preparation and it’s great to say that the Story is now officially ‘live’. To view it, check out the Agritech New Zealand website here; the new home of the NZ Agritech Story

I had invited a couple of leading venture investors to join us for the launch; Cathal Fitzgerald, Head of the Irish Sovereign Fund’s agritech investment team and Richard O’Gorman, Director of Rabobank’s Global Agritech Fund. We spoke about New Zealand’s current agritech landscape and the work of the ‘All of Government’ agritech taskforce to help build and scale the sector. I know both Cathal and Richard through our joint partnership with Farm2050. It was great to be able to facilitate this connection on the other side of the world. Their interest in the New Zealand investment landscape is as strong as ever.

Today is our final day at the Plough. Tomorrow, we head off to spend the day with Teagasc, Ireland’s state agency providing research, advisory and education in agriculture, horticulture, food and rural development. The value of this Mission is building. I look forward to updating tomorrow from the home of Ireland’s agri research excellence.

The central theme of the story is Powered by Place. All the materials will be housed on the website www.poweredbyplace.co.nz, which is linked to Agritech New Zealand’s main website. There is more to the work than just a video (although there is an excellent video as part of the toolkit!) – we also have case study material, facts and figures, speech notes, pitch decks and more.

We are looking to launch the story on morning TV this week, and will follow this with a media release, a story on the NZTE website, social-media campaign, and support from across NZ Inc through their many newsletters. As mentioned, it will also be launched internationally, with the NZ Delegation at the Irish Ploughing Competition (Europe’s largest agricultural show) featuring it as part of the NZ presence there.

This has been six months of exhaustive work. A project team included representatives from industry body Agritech New Zealand, the NZ Story group, from across the agritech ecosystem and government. The overall narrative and messages were informed by a series of industry workshops in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Palmerston North and Lincoln, involving around 300 representatives from across the sector.  

Consulting firm Deloitte also conducted offshore market insights research on current perceptions of New Zealand agritech by key industry stakeholders in priority markets – the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland. Their report is available as part of this toolkit.

We should be very proud of the work done by our teams have done, working in partnership with the Industry – this is an outstanding, innovative marketing campaign, and feedback from early previews are excellent. One industry veteran described it as brilliantly capturing the way he felt about the industry: ‘it brought a tear to my eye’.

Ngā mihi o te wiki o te reo Māori

The workshops were focused on discussing the Government’s strategy document – ‘Agritech In New Zealand: Towards an Industry Transformation Plan’, released on 2 July by Minister David Parker. You can view it here: https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/5878-growing-innovative-industries-in-new-zealand-agritech-in-new-zealand-towards-an-industry-transformation-plan

We wanted feedback. And we got it. In spades.

The Taskforce was established at the back end of 2018 to bring a number of New Zealand government agencies together – MBIE, MPI, NZTE, Callaghan Innovation, NZVIF & MFAT – to develop a cross-agency agenda to help grow the country’s agritech sector. Agritech New Zealand has been working closely with this taskforce ever since to ensure that its core deliverables are very much sector-led. We are all agreed that industry input is vital to ensure that the government gets it right.

So what’s next?

Over the coming weeks, the feedback and insights delivered at the workshops will be downloaded and distilled into a document that sets out some key actions and initiatives that are the outcome of these workshops.

Government Ministers thankfully are not hanging around. I’m expecting briefing documents to be prepared and presented to Ministers by the end of next month. We are likely to see the first actions and initiatives launched in Q1, 2020. In my experience, this is light speed for the public sector. In my view, this also demonstrates the commitment that government is giving to the growth and scaling of the sector.

This is critical for our domestic primary industry. Agriculture technology is one of the main levers that can help farmers and growers address many of the challenges they are facing today. It’s that impact that drives many of us to do this.

Increasing New Zealand agritech exports is another key aim of the Transformation Plan. This can only be done by scaling our agritech businesses with the right skills, investment and offshore support. These are all areas that Agritech New Zealand has been focused on over the past 12 months. It’s an area in which we are looking to add significant value to the government’s own work in this area.

Finally it’s a process that will keep going. Once the first set of actions and initiatives are ready to kick in, I expect to organise another set of workshops to enable entrepreneurs, researchers and established businesses engage directly in this work.

Thanks to everyone who has taken part in the workshops over the past month. You’ve been totally awesome!

Hamilton: 26 August: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-nz-government-agritech-strategy-consultation-workshop-hamilton-tickets-65383131707

Lincoln: 29 August: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-nz-government-agritech-strategy-consultation-workshop-lincoln-tickets-65383310241

The first two workshops in Palmerston North & Auckland were pretty much ‘sold out’ with great input from the 120 delegates who attended. We captured all that feedback and it will go a long way to help develop key actions and initiatives going forward. We already have over 120 people registered for the two workshops next week. I very much hope you can join us.

The final workshop is due to take place in Tauranga on Monday 2 September. Tickets for this event, taking place at the Classic Flyers Museum, are already flying (pardon the pun) out of the door. If you have not registered yet, you can reserve your seat today.

Tauranga: 2 September: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-nz-government-agritech-strategy-consultation-workshop-tauranga-tickets-66136713691

The taskforce is now made up of representatives from 6 government agencies. At the conclusion of the current roadshow, Agritech New Zealand will sit down with the team to help identify real actions that government can take to support the sector. This initiative, which is being driven at multi-Ministerial level, is one that we totally support. We hope you can join us over the next two weeks to help provide input into the key actions and initiatives we should take.

If you have not yet attended one of the scheduled workshops, there is still an opportunity to provide input directly to Taskforce representatives. There are still some seats available at our events on 26 August in Hamilton, 29 August in Lincoln and 2 September in Tauranga. 

Since last month’s newsletter, Agritech New Zealand and Callaghan Innovation have co-hosted a post-USA delegation workshop for our leading agri robotic and automation researchers.  We have identified some major commercial opportunities in North America with our partners, Western Growers. Leveraging these requires collaboration across our research sector and a further workshop is scheduled next month to progress these opportunities.

Yesterday, we co-hosted a workshop for the large delegation of New Zealand agritech companies heading to Ireland and the United Kingdom (UK) next month. Unlike the USA visit which was largely horticulture and crop focused, the delegation to Europe will be largely dairy tech-based. Highlights of the visit include participation in the UK Dairy Day event and the Irish Ploughing Championships in Carlow. With 300,000 people expected to attend, this is one event that we do not want to miss.

At home, Agritech New Zealand is also preparing for a major expansion of its activity. Over the past few months, we have been talking to the Precision Agriculture Association of New Zealand (PAANZ) to identify opportunities to collaborate and partner. Three members of the PAANZ board have been invited to join the Agritech New Zealand Executive Council as we progress these discussions. Adoption of agritech on New Zealand farms and orchards is a key driver to increase productivity, profitability and sustainability. Building one voice for the wider agritech sector can only help further drive it.

These activities would not be possible without the support of our members. Agritech New Zealand is a membership organisation and it’s the membership fees that make all this activity possible.

Agritech New Zealand’s Executive Council is currently developing a set of actions and priorities to further increase membership benefits. If you are not already a member and want to participate in some of the exciting events that are coming up, please visit our online Membership Application.

2019 has seen a significant ramping up of activity as agritech takes centre stage in Government thinking and strategy. Agritech New Zealand is at the forefront of this action as we provide the key interface with industry and the wider agritech sector.

I very much hope you can join us on this journey.

Ngā mihi

Peter Wren-Hilton
Executive Director
Agritech New Zealand

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