Around 30 of our members gathered in Hamilton last month for the NZPPI Strategy Forum. The purpose of the day was for our members to help the NZPPI Board identify the future strategic priorities that NZPPI should pursue.
The day included an overview of NZPPI’s journey over the past 5 years to establish itself as a primary industry organisation. During an open forum discussion our members gave their views on how they saw the future direction of NZPPI, focussing on strong advocacy and developing the industry.
NZPPI CE, Matt Dolan said “the day really achieved its purpose, providing NZPPI with feedback on how our members see its purpose, where it is performing well and where it needs to do better”.
Positioning ourselves in the primary industries has been the right approach, bringing us closer to Government and the sector organisations that have similar issues like water, labour, biosecurity and sustainability. Through these relationships we are better able to deal with the issues we have in common.
The priorities for the industry have changed over the past 5 years, with labour and sustainability becoming more important, overtaking biosecurity as the key challenge. Priorities will continue to change, so NZPPI needs to develop its capability across a range of issues and remain flexible and adaptive.
The key takeaways from the forum were:
- Positioning our industry as the solution to NZ’s food, environment and wellbeing goals.
- Moving from just selling plants (and input provider), to being a partner.
- Access to water will be a critical issue in the future.
- Labour and skills is along term strategic challenge.
- Sustainability and waste is becoming an urgent priority
Over the coming weeks, the NZPPI Board will use the insights from the forum and our stakeholders, to develop the NZPPI Strategy to guide the next phase of NZPPI and the industry. We will update our members as we make progress on our defining the priorities and our future direction.