Growers don’t need any more hats

Growers wear many hats. You are kaitiaki (guardians) of land and water, as well as weather forecasters and climate change adaptors. You are agronomists and growing experts, as well as sales people and members of the distribution system. You are business people even if your first love is growing. You put considerable time and effort into compliance. No doubt, you are also mediators and counsellors, and have become adept at looking after others as well as your own wellbeing. 

New Zealand is a changing place. The current Government is intent on creating a workplace where there is less variability in pay and conditions, and unions have more involvement. The Government wants to achieve these outcomes through Fair Pay Agreements. 

HortNZ is uniting with product groups and other business-oriented groups such as Business New Zealand to lobby against the Fair Pay Agreement proposal. We believe the proposal is unnecessarily complex and will have a detrimental effect on people’s prosperity. The proposal will stifle innovation and flexibility, and further reduce New Zealand’s productivity and international competitiveness at a time when we should be finding ways to boost productivity and increase competitiveness. 

HortNZ wants to ensure growers can focus on doing what they do the best – growing! While it is unrealistic to hope that growers could wear fewer hats, we certainly do not want to see them required to wear more. 

That said, as an industry we value our social licence. The ability to access land, water and people in order to feed New Zealanders and the rest of the world, healthy and great tasting fruit and vegetables. But growers also need to make money in order to stay in business and invest in the future. Growers cannot be all things to all people. Their role in society is to grow nutritious, low carbon food and pay taxes so New Zealand can run as a country. 

It would be simplistic to say the situation in New Zealand today is the result of successive governments’ failures, irrespective of their ideology. However, exacerbated by Covid-19, we are in a challenging situation as a nation.

Our plea is not to increase growers’ hats but to let them grow as that is what they do best. Letting growers grow is also the best way to ensure their contribution to New Zealand’s society and economy.