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Science is the future

Scientific research is essential to the future of New Zealand’s food industry, according to AgResearch CEO, Dr Andrew West.

Speaking at the 40th National Agricultural Fieldays at Mystery Creek last month, Dr West said NZ’s food producers will need to increasingly concentrate on supplying premier foods.

“Global demand for high quality food and other primary sector products has never been greater. This presents an unparalleled opportunity for NZ, already a recognised leader in the production of safe, top quality primary produce,” he said.

Dr West said that while the global demand for high quality, pastorally derived food was truly substantial, food industries also faced significant challenges.

“In the longer term we cannot compete on being the cheapest because we are now competing with developing countries with lower land, labour and production costs, and with NZ production technologies courtesy of NZ.

“NZ can’t feed the world. With our current product mix, perhaps we can feed 30 million people, not the 6.3 billion that inhabit this planet. NZ’s rising cost of production and the fact that we operate sophisticated food industries implies one thing — we need to be in high value add and high value capture.

“We must not just create more value, and then give too much of it away to some firm overseas: we also need to return a bigger share of that value back to NZ. To achieve the twin challenges of value add and value capture we need many things and two of the most important are science and technology.

“The NZ Government’s new Fast Forward Fund is all about transforming NZ’s food industries firmly into this space. It represents a fantastic opportunity to be genuinely transformational.”

Meanwhile, agricultural and medical scientists at two of NZ’s leading research organisations are joining forces to improve animal production and human health.

A collaboration between international quality researchers at AgResearch and the Liggins Institute — a biomedical research institute at the University of Auckland — has the potential to bring about major improvements in agriculture, such as lamb growth, disease resistance, milk production and human health.

Liggins Institute director, professor Peter Gluckman, believes that the interface between human and animal science is a strength which NZ has yet to fully realise.

“Researchers at both these organisations have been at the forefront of a revolution in our understanding of biology,” he said.

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