We don’t know what we don’t know about food security

Opinion: We often hear that New Zealand is ‘feeding the world’ with the food we produce. Less hyperbolically, one regularly cited industry estimate puts it at 40 million people, including New Zealanders, which is actually about half a percent of the world. 

This is the idea of national food security. As a small island nation at the bottom of the globe, with very little buying power and at the end of a long supply chain, you would think this would be something that would exercise politicians’ minds. Our capacity to feed ourselves is also something within the realm of imagination: we have a mostly temperate climate, abundant fresh water, and a small, highly urbanised population, meaning we have a relatively high proportion of land available to produce food.

So why have our governments never done a national food security assessment? The United Kingdom, despite its much greater power as a global player, has seen fit to take stock of its food security – most recently in 2010 – with follow-up reports monitoring relevant trends. Singapore – also an island nation – has developed a strategy to significantly boost its food security by 2030.

Why is this not a concern for our political and industry leaders? Is this part of the good old New Zealand ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, or are we afraid of what we may find?

In the vacuum of leadership, in 2020, researchers at Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research carried out an assessment of New Zealand’s food security, which highlighted how much our food production system is geared towards the export market. New Zealand produces a lot of dairy products, more than 90 percent of which we export (dairy being our single biggest export commodity group at 28 percent of all exports), and lamb and beef, 80-90 percent of which we export. We also produce a lot of fruit and vegetables (apples, kiwifruit and wine grapes being our biggest exports here), but much of this is consumed domestically.

So a big tick on meat and dairy, and a wide variety of fruit and veg. We don’t do so well on the carbohydrate or non-animal protein front – such as wheat, rice, or legumes. And for sugar, cocoa and coffee we are entirely reliant on imports – and though a shortage of these foods would lead to a lot of grumpiness in the population (me included) it would not lead to malnutrition.

But let’s look at some other considerations. It is estimated that globally food production contributes about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions – second only to energy. Agriculture is also the biggest user of fresh water and contributes to freshwater degradation and biodiversity loss – especially through land-use change.

We also know that not all food is equal in terms of ‘energy return on investment’, that is, the calorific energy output we get from food versus all the inputs (for example energy, nutrients, land, and water).

Let’s look at each of these in turn. Though globally agriculture is a big emitter of greenhouse gases, in New Zealand it takes an even bigger share – nearly half our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. This is because of our heavy reliance on livestock for food production – ruminant animals produce methane from their digestion of grass. In fact, meat and dairy production rank in the top 10 of all major foods in terms of their generation of greenhouse gas emissions. Beef leads the pack at a whopping 100kg CO₂ equivalent per kilogram of food produced (though it has to be said that – inconveniently for chocolate lovers – dark chocolate is ranked second).

What about other environmental impacts? In terms of land use, once again meat and dairy rank in the top five (beef, lamb, cheese, milk and pork, in that order). Freshwater withdrawals? Cheese and meat once again feature in the top 10, accompanied by nuts and rice. And in terms of water pollution, meat and dairy again feature in the top 10, alongside farmed fish.

We also know the food system produces a huge amount of waste. About 30 percent of all food is wasted – 13 percent is lost between harvest and retail, and an estimated 17 percent of total global food production is wasted in households. Up to 10 percent of global greenhouse gases comes from food that is never eaten.   

In the economy and business, there is a big emphasis on efficiency: the efficient use of limited resources to produce stuff. But we don’t seem to care so much about efficiency when it comes to producing food. It is estimated that food crops produce about 12 times more calories per hectare than growing animals for meat. This is because animals (especially larger ones like cattle) are astonishingly inefficient at converting calories from their food into meat (calories for human consumption). It takes 100 calories to create 3 calories’ worth of beef and 4 calories’ worth of lamb.

Yet in New Zealand, pastoral farming (the raising of livestock) occupies about 40 percent of total land area, but horticulture occupies a mere 1.5 percent. And remembering too that land is just one input; livestock farming for meat and dairy products also rank highest for greenhouse gas emissions, freshwater use and water pollution.

A clear-sighted analysis of what food we choose to produce and whether this is the best choice from a food-security perspective, as well as nutritional, energy and resource efficiency, and climate and environmental perspectives, would surely be a good thing. It would also be beneficial for future-proofing our agricultural sector. Food industry experts have warned it is only a matter of time before precision fermentation processes are able to produce replacements for milk protein at scale, displacing milk powder as an ingredient in processed foods.

This would have serious implications for heavily leveraged dairy farmers, reliant on continued high returns on this export commodity. The same warnings are being raised for meat farmers, with the rise in popularity of meat alternatives.

Food production in New Zealand, like other nations, has been driven by market forces (profit maximisation) rather than optimisation of calorie production from available land, or creating diversity and resilience in our food system.

Many experts believe something as important as our ability to feed ourselves should not be left to market forces. So what would a government with foresight do? Following the lead of the UK and commissioning a national food security assessment would be a sensible first step. It is likely such an assessment will point to the need to recalibrate land-use decisions to better balance domestic food consumption requirements against the production of export commodities, especially as the future viability of these products looks increasingly uncertain. It would surely also signal the need to better optimise calorie production from our precious land, water and other resources, rather than the current focus on the maximisation of profit (while externalising environmental and climate harm). If the UK assessment is anything to go by, this more than likely would include a shifting away from livestock production towards the production of crops such as wheat and nuts (for which we rely heavily on imports).

Such optimisation of land use would create opportunities to free up marginally productive land and return it to nature – with all the biodiversity, resilience and carbon-sequestering benefits that that will bring. Diversification of food production systems is likely to feature as a future strategic focus too, including greater support for home gardening and urban food production. We must also step up the protection of New Zealand’s precious, highly productive soils, on which we grow fruit and vegetables.

As householders, we are urged to ensure we have our pantries well-stocked with nutritious and versatile food, so that in the event of a disaster disrupting food supplies, we can feed our families. So why do we not care about this as a country? Let’s hope it doesn’t take another global pandemic, spiralling geopolitical turmoil or widespread harvest failure for us to discover how food secure we are.