The Agri-business challenge for New Zealand!
Recently media reports have been thick and fast on how the Chinese diet is changing pushing up the demand for feed grain.
Well the Financial Times has an article on this which points out the following:
- currently, China is self sufficient in wheat
- is a small exporter of rice
- imports soy beans
this is likely to change.
What is more important is that it appears that a number of entrepreneurs in China see major opportunities in modernising farming and food production policies.
This is critical if China is to improve capability to feed more of it’s population in the medium to longer term.
Consequently this leads into a theme which Adam has postulated in a number of posts on feed issues, namely the opportunity for New Zealand to benefit from the provision of skills and expertise to countries such as China.
This has the potential to provide very considerable economic benefit to new Zealand, whilst reducing the stress on the environment here.
At the same time applying efficient NZ practices and skills in China has a number of significant benefits, including, but not necessarily limited to:-
- NZ can earn money for advice
- NZ can license techniques
- necessary research leading to more innovations and license revenues can be funded
- Carbon leakage through agriculture can be mitigated
- environmental stress from farming practices in China can be mitigated
- NZ carbon emissions may be reduced over time
Question is will NZ business step up to the challenge and the opportunity?
Not just in China, but elsewhere such as Latin America, India etc
Tags: Agribusiness, China, Food Production, New Zealand, Opportunity, Skills export, Weightless Economy
