New Zealand’s focus on agricultural science, benefitting both the farmer and grower, has positioned the country as one of the world’s lowest-impact producers of animal protein. With research from the northern hemisphere indicating that what we produce from our pastures is desired, the prospects for the future are good.

Scientific research allows us to find out more about the way in which the world works. It includes observation, trial and error, systematic experimentation, deduction and induction, and progress in pushing back the frontiers of understanding.

We moved from soothsayers, witch doctors and shaman examining the entrails of animals for signs, to looking at those entrails to see what they contained and how they connected with the animal. The contents might have given the soothsayer some idea of where the animal had been eating, thereby giving a clue to where more food might be found (and building the soothsayer’s reputation). Connections came later and enabled function to be explored. School children used to be able to do similar explorations dissecting dogfish and rats. Now, videos are likely to replace the hands-on experience. Similarly, many of the chemical experiments we were allowed to do last century have been replaced by teacher demonstrations behind safety screens. And no, online is not as good as face-to-face, hands-on, real-life experience.

Despite this change in teaching, people still do choose science options for secondary and tertiary education. Furthermore, some still make a career in scientific research by asking difficult questions and trying to find answers through experiments and trials. Doing so is vital in a world of population growth, raising an essential question for all of us in food production:

How do we feed the ever-increasing numbers of people to a better state of nutrition without making further impact on the natural environment?

New Zealand farmers, growers, extension officers, rural professionals, entrepreneurs, researchers and scientists have been working on the big question since the 1800s. They’ve had different names over the decades (e.g. Department of Agriculture in 1890s to Ministry for Primary Industries now), and different tools for their work, but fundamentally they have been trying to increase productivity and identify which factors have made the difference.

Productivity is one of the five points of sustainability agreed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1993:

1. Maintain or enhance production/services (Productivity), 2. Reduce the level of production risk (Security), 3. Protect the quality/potential of natural resources and prevent soil and water degradation (Protection), 4. Be economically viable (Viability), and 5. Be socially acceptable (Acceptability).

For farmers trying to achieve sustainability, economic viability is paramount for allowing investment in technologies (which help increase productivity), and practices to minimise impact on the environment.

New Zealand farmers and scientists working with rural professionals have achieved productivity gains in agriculture that exceed those achieved in other sectors in New Zealand (StatsNZ data), and those achieved in agriculture in other developed countries (OECD data).

Before Covid19, New Zealand was achieving over four times the Total Factor Productivity Growth (labour and capital) that the UK was able to report – the effect of producer support subsidies on influencing behaviour is understood, but nobody has yet worked out a politically acceptable solution for removing them.

For New Zealand, life without subsidies (since 1985) meant a change in focus to economic viability by meeting customer (and consumer) expectations.

The science system went through a shake-up in the 1990s and scientists moved into a competitive funding system where they were urged to gain outside contracts. User-pays dominated the thinking and independence was questioned – if research is funded by a commercial company, can the results be trusted?

Furthermore, some of the interactions between farmers and scientists, as well as rural professionals, were lost. This was detrimental - part of New Zealand’s success has been because scientists working with progressive farmers have been able to discuss ideas, test them out, adapt them appropriately, investigate drivers and test their practicability and effectiveness in other environments. When that interaction breaks down, the risks multiply significantly:

1. Scientists follow impractical notions. 2. Scientists investigate research that they are confident will work rather than embrace potentially innovative approaches that have a ‘risk of failure’. 3. Researchers choose surveys and models as a way of gathering information that is less costly and more predictable than field trials. 4. Industry starts promoting a product because it appears to work for one farmer. All four have been apparent in New Zealand in recent times.

For farmers and growers, the questions for any ‘advance’ being promoted might include:

1. Do the comparisons show improvements relevant to your farm? 2. Are the claimed improvements both statistically and biologically meaningful? 3. Do the claims include actual data, or just percentages? A claim of a 10% improvement might be statistically significant, but what is the starting point? 4. At a growth rate of 20kg/ha/day DM, another 2kg might be significant, but what is the cost to achieve that improvement? Do you need extra feed at the time of year the trial was done? Do the economics stack up? 5. What timeframe was measured: A week? A month? Results from a short-term trial might not reflect typical conditions, and results extrapolated from a glasshouse to the field certainly don’t.

Perhaps of most importance: can the marketer explain the mechanisms and processes of operation in the new product or approach? Without a comprehensible explanation of mechanisms and processes, how can the drivers and potential interactions with other factors be known?

The role of science, and hence of scientists, is to identify the drivers and interactions – always with the goal of increasing productivity, reducing environmental impact, maintaining or improving economic viability and identifying any unintended consequences.

The International Food and Information Council (IFIC) 2024 Food Health Survey of over 1,000 Americans reported that 70% of Americans are now ‘trying to consume protein’. Taste ranked number one for purchase decision (approximately 85% of respondents), followed by price (approximately 75%), healthfulness (just over 60%) and convenience (just under 60%). Environment was just over 30%, but for the premium markets, increased to almost 40%. Premium is where New Zealand is focusing – supported by science.

The auguries are good. From observation through entrails, to the science of the product and the research on consumer trends, New Zealand’s animal protein meets what the market wants.

In addition to this, with animal protein for least impact, we are feeding more people to a better state of nutrition without making further impact on the natural environment.

The challenge of what people are prepared to pay for our product continues, but that is why processors have the premium markets as their target. Everything that food producers, rural professionals, researchers and scientists do gets us closer to the government’s goal of doubling the value of the export industry – and closer to our own goals of sustainability.