Important Issues

Although our emphasis for the ODPG is farmer to farmer education there are many other issues that affect us, such as government policy and regulations and social perception of our industry. So, this section on our website will be used to communicate things we think are important.

Please contact us if you would like us to include something in particular.

The Organic Products Bill (May 2020)

The Organic Products Bill has been drafted and is open to submissions until May 28th 2020.

The ODPG will be making a submission, as will OANZ, once we have had time to go through the Bill and invite comments from our members.

Please find relevant documents below, including a summary of the full bill. The summary is intended to be as close to the Bill as possible, but shorter, easier to read and without the lengthy repetitions. As such, for specific wording and clarification of any points, please refer directly to the Bill itself

Organic-Products-Bill (in full)Download
Summary of the Organic Products BillDownload
Summary of OANZ MeetingDownload
Draft Proposal for Regulating Organic BusinessesDownload
ODPG-SUBMISSION-to-the-ORGANIC-PRODUCTS-BILLDownload

Submission Templates

Please find below some templates, broken down into subjects from the ODPG Submission, to use if you wish to make an individual submission. Please feel free to edit these to suit you, or combine them, or to lodge a submission against the whole Bill if you feel it necessary. Don’t forget to add your name and address to the bottom before sending.

AUTHORITY-AND-ENFORCEMENTDownload
CEO-ADVISORY-BOARD-AND-NATIONAL-MARKDownload
INCREASED-REGULATION-AND-COSTDownload

SUBMISSIONS CLOSE ON THURSDAY 28th MAY

Where to send your submissions

Greenpeace Submission to Goverment on Regenerative Farming (May 2020)

Greenpeace recently forwarded “The case for the NZ Government to invest in Regenerative Agriculture as part of its Covid 19 economic recovery package” to Parliament. READ MORE

ODPG was given the opportunity to include their vision for future farmers in NZ within the document. However, the resulting submission is a disappointment containing very few of our values and does not reflect the shared principles of ODPG.

We wish to thank all those who contributed to the submission – we forwarded all your comments straight to Greenpeace for inclusion in their submission, and we know many of you contacted them directly as well.

While the outcome isn’t what ODPG envisaged, Greenpeace has highlighted the need for ‘regenerative organic agriculture’ in NZ and its benefits for the country.

We watch this space with anticipation.

ODPG Executive Committee

. . . . .

The points submitted by ODPG:

  • Provide monetary incentives to follow regenerative methods/chemical free
  • Create pride in farming with Nature
  • Introduce a logo to be displayed at the farm gate for regenerative farming (BioGro, AsureQuality do)
  • Create different levels of compliance/proof of authenticity
  • Reduce the reliance on imported fertilizers
  • Introduce penalties on the usage of imported inputs( eg, palm kernel)
  • Connect people to the land through food
  • Highlight wellness food that originated from regenerative farmers
  • With input from stakeholders, assist scientists develop alternatives to Biocides
  • Tax the usage of fungicides, pesticides, herbicides on the land both rural & urban
  • Strengthen NZ’s brittle food system with nutritious agriculture for NZers not for export
  • Introduce regenerative agriculture as NZ’s new self-identity
  • Connect farmers to food outlets
  • Regenerative education begins in year one, making a connection to the earth and where food comes from
  • Govt to provide support where large agencies hold the monopoly ie. Fertiliser companies, dairy companies.
  • Support regenerative agriculture groups & conferences
  • Sponsor international speakers to attend NZ’s regenerative agricultural events

Healthy River Programme Report

By Fiona Ellmers

Healthy Rivers – Wai Ora are just starting the second block of submissions which has the most submissions to be heard. That process extends into July. I believe there is a third block happening in August. It is going to continue to be a long winded process but hopefully that will allow a lot of relevant material to be presented and evaluated by the hearing panel. I think we can be hopeful that this will be taken note of. It is so much better than the usual council processes where they request submissions of their proposed changes and ultimately have already decided what they are going to do and are only going through a sham public consultation process. This time we have an independent hearing panel. I believe the other regulatory bodies and government will be watching this space. It is so critical that this is done right because it has the potential to “fix” a lot of things.

There is a lot of damaging information in the proposed plan change which highlights the ignorance in a number of areas of the creators, e.g. proposed exclusion of cattle from country of “x” gradient which has no scientific validation and comes only from observation of erosion of a certain soil type on the east coast – a plan to institute that throughout the Waikato is doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Cover Photo Credit: Andrys Steinstra (Pixabay.com)