Dan Eb – Moving to citizen-connected food and farming.

In this podcast, Dan Eb, 2021 Nuffield Scholar talks to Farmers Weekly Managing Editor,
Bryan Gibson about the role of farming in an increasingly urbanised society.

How might a future might look if we move to a food and farming system in New Zealand that
works beyond only producing food, a system that not only benefits producers but every kiwi.

Dan proposes that if we could build local food models that by design, connect urban kiwis
with the sources of at least some of their food production, then many challenges created by
urbanism might be mitigated.

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
You've joined the Ideas That Grow Podcast, brought to you by Rural Leaders.
In this series, we'll be drawingon insights from innovative rural leaders to help
plant ideas that grow so where regentscan flourish. Ideas that Grow is presented
an association with Farmers Weekly. Yeah, with the Ideas That Grow Podcast.
My name's Brian Gibson, Managing editorof the Farmers Weekly. And this week

(00:26):
we are checking in with a relativelyrecent Nutfield scholar, Daniel lib how's it
going, KURTA Very well? Thanks? And where are you calling from?
I'm calling from my house in Auckland, but half the time you'll find me
at my family farm up in Kuiper. And is that where you grew up?
Up in Kuiper? And I mostlygrew up in the city. I

(00:49):
was very lucky to have sort ofa foot in both camps. We bought
the farm when I was sort ofa very early teenager and I would normally
spend the weeks in this and theneither most weekends or every second weekend up
at the farm. And as theolder I've got, the more and more
time I've been able to spend upthere. And I know a little bit

(01:11):
about your work over the last fewyears. I mean, you've kind of
married those two aspects of your upbringinginto a career, really, haven't you.
That's exactly it. My mother's beenin public relations for a very long
time and my father's farmer. SoI thought, you know what, let's
do Agrie Coms. Why not?M and So you run Dirt Road Communications.

(01:34):
Tell me a little bit about that. Sure, Dirt Road Communications is
a purpose marketing agency. So I'mvery selective of the people I work with.
They need to be driving towards ashared mission of mine, which is
a just and regenerative food system inaltero in New Zealand. So I have
the privilege of working with people likeAgrie Woman's Development Trust who are really focused

(01:57):
on building capability amongst farmers. Iwork with local food system advocates as well.
Yeah, but it's not really init to flip tractors. I think
we're looking more at systemic issues andbig change in food and farming. And
I support these people with digital marketing, brand positioning, helping them understand their

(02:19):
value, proposition, building big projects, that kind of thing. M and
that is kind of the same sortof wheelhouse as your Netfield Scholar Report,
isn't it? Yeah? Yeah,the report was an opportunity to slow down
and look at big picture as toa kind of change that these organizations are

(02:44):
driving for and that I have theability to help support. And so it
was about articulating, well, whatdoes the future look like when we achieve
you know, a food and farmingsystem in New Zealand that benefits producers and
in it fits every key we becausefoods really really important and it just doesn't

(03:05):
just drive our economy, it drivesour families, it drives our culture,
drives our health. So it wasabout the report was an opportunity to step
back and paint a picture of whatsuccess could look like when we change that
system. Yeah. I mean it'syou know, a criticism or a challenge
often talked about in terms of ourfood production sector that it's kind of so

(03:30):
good and at certain things that it'skind of lost the connection to it's own
community, if you know what Imean. Because we export ninety five per
cent of all the food we produce. Therefore all our food prizes are driven
by international market forces, and youknow the price of cheese gets on everyone's

(03:51):
nerves. Is that kind of somethingthat you were looking to address. Yeah,
yeah, I think you've You've explainedit really well. I'd like to
tell little make believe stories to explainthese big concepts. And the thing I
think about is if you're a Kiwimum living in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch,
big city, so eighty four percentof us live urban lives now,

(04:13):
so you're wanted that big majority,and you know in the background that food
and farming is really important to NewZealand's as an economic driver. But the
thing that you're almost worried about iswhere you're feeding your kid for dinner?
Is it healthy? Is and nutritioushas been grown as sustainably as possible?
Is it affordable? So yes,as as growers and producers were really really

(04:38):
good at the production side of things. But that relationship is really really important.
You know that Kiwi Mum's kids aregoing to be the kind of people
that we want to recruit into foodand farming later on, and if they've
got a broken relationship with food andfarming, it's going to be really difficult
to encourage them into food and farmingcareers. That Kiwi Mum's a voter,
might she might end up voting forparties that want to be more restrictive on

(05:02):
food production. We're seeing that now, you know, for all the regulation
that's coming through, and there's abig missed opportunity that she's not going to
jump on social media or when she'soverseas my bad mouth food and farming in
New Zealand, she's not where there'sa missed opportunity to turn her into a

(05:23):
real advocate for what we're doing becauseshe has a broken relationship with food and
farming, or with farming in particular. So we can't we can't think about
farming without thinking about its role insociety. And this is now an urbanized
society. And until we start buildingthings to help rebuild that connection and start

(05:44):
taking that relationship really sciously, we'regoing to continue to have to see bad
results. And I think those threebig areas recruitment, social license, and
the ability to tell a really cool, authentic provalence story overseas. M So,
how do you go about unpacking thisor solving this or moving the dial

(06:04):
on this problem? In a fieldscholar report, where did you start?
Oh? Well, how do yougo about it? Slowly and painfully?
As probably the best description of it. It's a very big question. The
first place I sort of went tois, well, let's take a really

(06:26):
zoomed out approach and think, howdo we start how do we often think
about food and farming, and howshould we think about food and farming.
So the first place I started waswe often think about food and farming as
a business and as an industry.But I feel that food and farming doesn't
necessarily belong just in there. Ithink food and farming should be thought about
more as a public good. Sopublic a really good example for public good

(06:48):
as healthcare and education. These aresectors within our society that have a high
degree of touch with everyday in NewZealanders, there's a whole lot of trust,
like social licenses, almost unquestioned.You know, no one questions whether
we need education. It's just fundamentallythere. And you know, I've had
the privilege of having a lot oftime on farm, so I know that

(07:11):
the farm can be a place ofhealing, can be a place of learning,
it could be a place of inspiration, it can be a place of
health. And so in my eyes, farming has the ability to transcend just
a mere industry. You know,shoes iPhones, socks, handbags and actually
sit in a public good space.So I think that reframes really important because

(07:34):
it opens up a lot of potentialbecause now you can start saying, well,
what if, you know, howwould we make farming more like education,
how would we know why it doeseducation such a trusted sector. And
it opens up more opportunities for thingslike funding because now you can say,
hey, can we go to theMinistry of Environment, Ministry of Education,

(07:55):
Ministry of Social Development and MPI togetherand do sister change stuff because it's really
good for society. And so you'vesuddenly in a very different ball game.
Just from that mindset we shift.So that was the first That was the
first bit m And you're not talkingabout you know. I mean if we

(08:16):
look at education, a lot ofthe schools you know, run centrally.
It's more a partnership in a wayof looking at things. So farming businesses
go, my bottom line needs tobe my bottom lines are mixed by yes,
making a profit on these you know, animals that I raise, but

(08:37):
also taking these things off in asocial or environmental sense. Is that kind
of the idea? Yeah, Imean that that's the starting place. And
then you start to think about whatconcrete solutions would look like. Education might
not be the best example in thisinstance, healthcare is probably a better example.
So to me, the healthcare isquite interesting because you effectively have two

(08:58):
models that sit side by side.You've got a private healthcare model where people
pay for service, and then you'vegot a public healthcare model. Interestingly,
doctors flip between the two. Youcan have public doctors that operate privately and
vice versa, and regardless of whichsystem you play, and every doctor gets
made well into very respected law andsociety. So to me, that's a

(09:20):
kind of solutions that mindset will willprompt you into. You know, we
might get into this later, butnow as good as time as any.
A relatively concrete solution that I couldsee as if there was an organization set
up to encourage farmers who are farmingclose to cities to transition to local food

(09:45):
economies and local food business models,whether that's community supported agriculture or technology driven
food distribution like Happy Cow Milk,which is sort of the the Fontira factory
in a box all and that hassome government support because it would be required
to reduce the amount that some consumersare paying for food, and let's be

(10:13):
operated on something like sort of apostcode system where depending on your post code,
you pay a different amount for yourtucker. But alternatively, a farmer
who's further away from town would wantprobably participate in the more status quo export
model running through your processor and thenselling our Kai overseas. So there's no

(10:35):
reason why those two things can't sitreally well blended together. But by having
that some of farmers incentivized to operatein that local system, you're solving all
these other really really big issues likesocial license, like recruitment, like people
understanding where their food comes from,and also creating this really really fertile ground

(10:56):
to tell a really compelling international storyabout security and how important KAI is to
New Zealanders and this is how wetreat it. And you're creating content and
you're building this overseas providence story aswell. So a lot of it really
does sit within that reframe that,you know what, smart investment from industry

(11:16):
and government into these the sort ofpublic good esque food system models, particularly
local, can really net some massiveresults in the long run. M M.
And I guess we should mention sinceyou're the bright spark behind open farms,

(11:37):
you know. I mean that programwas run on a lot of farms
that were most of them were relativelyclose to urban centers, and that showed
that there was a real appetite fromboth farmers and from the general public to
come together and engage on this foodduty didn't then, yeah, exactly,

(11:58):
And and I think if we couldbuild particularly local food models that by design
connect urban kiwis with the sources ofat least some of their food production,
then it becomes like sort of economically, there's an economic rationale to a farmer

(12:20):
to host open days. So nowthere's an economic farmer for a ration,
there's an economic rationale for a farmerto connect with a local school. Then
maybe there's some financial incentives that goalong with that. And so suddenly you're
you're kind of breaking that barrier,that sort of sixty minute old barrier between
city or like the city limits,and then farming starts, farming starts here,

(12:41):
and here's the city here. Youstart blurring that line. And I
think the blurring of that line isreally really important if we're going to solve
somebody's really entrenched issues that basically urbanismhas created over the last forty fifty sixty
years. But we need new modelsto do that. We can't just hope
a couple of open farm days aregoing to do it, and we actually

(13:01):
have to do relatively large system changeto design the outcomes that we want.
What else did you find in yourreport that you think could help in this
values driven food transition. I thinkit's important also to believe that this change
is already happening. This isn't somethingwe have to sort of manufacture, this

(13:24):
idea of citizen connected businesses or newbusiness models. The stuff's the stuff's already
happening organically. So it's kind ofabout latching onto that. And instead of
seeing that as a threat to theexport dominate, dominated, centralized system of

(13:46):
food, we see that as areally really supportive sort of ancillary model that
will that the two can gell reallyreally well together. And so I do
just want to reiterate that, like, these two models aren't in competition at
all, quite the opposite. AndI know that when we talk about public
goods and it starts getting into sortof the realm of politics and words like

(14:09):
socialism get thrown around and stuff likethat, I think that's a sidetrack like,
at the end of the day,we've got to focus on outcomes that
we actually want and kind of beideology ideologically agnostic a little bit like you
know the Cold War called they wanttheir ideological battle from fifty years ago.
This is twenty twenty three, andwe need every tool we've got on the

(14:31):
table to fix somebody's really deep entrenchedproblems. In terms of other stuff I've
found, I think there's there's awhole lot of really smart, sort of
tactical plays that we can do toget us there as well. So these
are things like addition sort of socialdiversifications that we can layer onto farms.

(15:01):
So I've just come back from myNutfield GFP travel and one of the things
that really stood out was a bunchof people in the Netherlands who are doing
these really interesting partnerships and using theirfarms in partnership with local healthcare providers or
local schools. These are financial businesstransactions and having kids come on to the

(15:26):
farm regularly as sort of as apartnership with local schools and sorts of becoming
an education platform. There was onefarmer who was who had partnered with a
local healthcare provider to bring kids withlearning disabilities onto the farm, and he
sort was a collaboration between the healthcareprovider, a sort of learning disabilities specialist,

(15:50):
and the farmer and they were allco collaborating to create this program for
those kids. Now the pay thefunder is the Ministry of either education or
healthcare in that instance. But youknow that that diversification cost the farmer build
a small hut to make sure thatthey can't get rained on, and some

(16:11):
time to build the system. Butat the end of the day, that's
a revenue generating diversification that he's layeredonto his farm that cost him very little
and is returning him pretty good profit. Like we we're sort of desperate for
these ways to eke out some moremargin off our landscapes. And I just

(16:32):
think that these sort of these communityconnection diversifications are absolute, you know,
like a an unearthed gem that costvery little to do. Yes, there's
some soft skills that are required,and there'd be some upskelling and you'd have
to get relatively comfortable with new peoplecoming onto the farm and all that kind
of thing, but you know,it's a lot cheaper than putting in kiwi

(16:56):
fruit. What's what's the what's thelicense for gold kiwifruit these days of mill
yep, you know, and thenyou're also running the risk of a bad
harvest and all that kind of stuff. There's no risk to this, there's
very little risk and you make somecash. So I think, for in
a time when traditional food production ofour farms is becoming harder and harder,
pick a reason, government regulation higherand put costs, climate change, poor

(17:22):
returns on global markets, this kindof social diversification is just gold. And
I just don't feel that we're enough. Farmers, particularly in those peri urban
areas, are are seeing them.And that's what a large part of my
work is now doing, is buildingprojects that make it easy to move into

(17:44):
this sort of new citizen connected farmingmodel, which I think is going to
be really valuable for farmers who arecash strapped. Now, you mentioned your
travels. That's obviously a big partof the Nutfield journey. Any other highlights
from your trips broad Oh yeah,heaps, heaps. I'm trying to write
up a bit of a reflections documentnow. It's it's hard because I keep

(18:07):
trying to add stuff in and takingstuff out. Yeah, we were we
had a great group. We wentto Japan, then the then Israel,
then the Netherlands, then Washington,DC, and the Central Valley in California.
To me, a big highlight waswas seeing some of the you know,

(18:32):
I'm a big picture guy, Ilike big ideas and that kind of
stuff, so seeing sort of whatwas the driving force behind agriculture in these
different contexts. So we'd go toIsrael and farms were placed where they were,
and water infrastructure was was at thescale and excellent standard that it is
not because of you know, governmentpolicies or anything like that, but it

(18:56):
was all done for security reasons,because secure already is a number one driver
in Israel, and so agriculture isalmost a byproduct of security. That's what
happens when you fight three existential warsand the last seven ye odd years,
interestingly, the big driver in aplace like Japan was tradition, and so
they've actually inadvertently figured out, throughjust basically trial and error and population growth

(19:23):
and a relatively restricted coastal plain thatthey have to fuse agriculture and urban life
together. So the outside of sortof downtown Tokyo, the landscape is a
mix of residential business, rice paddies, vegetable gardens, and so they actually
don't really have a social license problembecause their geography represents that breaking of the

(19:48):
barriers and fusion of urban and ruraland food production and lifestyles that that I've
been talking about. So they don'thave an issue their geography. The geography
has push them into a into aspace, and so it's interesting to look
at those places and think, then, well, what's our driving force?
And if we're honest with ourselves rightnow, it's agribusiness. It's you know,

(20:12):
an economic powerhouse, and that's there'snothing right or wrong with that.
But to me, that feels verylimited, and I think there's a lot
we can explore an experiment on topof it as as a as as just
an eco powerhouses. I think itcan be a public food and farming can
be a public good. And interestingly, I think our geography, this idea

(20:33):
that we're basically restricted as kiwis toour urban centers and there's a whole lot
of farmland in between. That's ahuge barrier and we've got to build little
strings and you know, break littlegaps in that wall, particularly in our
peri urban areas to get where wewant to go, which is a society

(20:53):
where people are really proud of foodand farming and a healthy and and see
food and farming not just as areally viable career, but as a mission
and a purpose for something that theywant to do for the risk of their
life. And I think that's entirelyachievable. We just got to build things
to do it. How have youfound the netfield experience overall awesome? Yeah,

(21:15):
honestly, I can't recommend it highlyenough. I think everyone's experience is
a little bit different. I thinkit can give you what you're looking for,
even if you don't really know whatthat is. For me, it
was time, like it was aforced requirement to sit down and kind of
write out my manifesto almost you know, like these thoughts are running through my

(21:38):
head. I work on all thesedifferent variety of projects, how are they
all working together? What am Iaiming for? And that was really valuable
for me. It's enabled me toarticulate some of these things which are pretty
hard, you know, big meatyideas to describe. And so my newfield
gave me time. Whereas I cansee that for a lot of other of

(22:02):
my fellow scholars they gave them experience, or they gave them some sort of
learning about themselves that they hadn't hadn'totherwise, Scott, But for me,
it was time, and time's prettyprecious. Thanks for listening to Ideas That
Grow. A Rural Leaders podcast inpartnership with Messy and Lincoln Universities, EGBART
and food HQ. This podcast waspresented by Farmers Weekly. For more information

(22:26):
on rural Leaders in the field,New Zealand farming scholarships, or the Keller
Rural Leaders program, please visit RuralLeaders dot co dot z