Future Focus: Signposts to Success for New Zealand's Primary Industries
Next Steps
What are the critical uncertainties – and the strategic certainties – facing New Zealand’s primary industries?
MAF’s strategic foresight project aimed to provide a starting point for industry in exploring these strategic questions, by outlining some of the key drivers of change that have particular impacts for the primary industries.
The Primary Industries 2020 Summit in November 2007 has begun the process of shaping a vision for the primary industries in the year 2020, by examining key trends driving changes in consumer demand, assessing their impacts on existing markets and sectors, and developing ideas on how sector businesses can build and maintain competitive advantage.
This publication aims to be a catalyst for further exploration with sector stakeholders on how to respond to these and other challenges on the strategic horizon. Anticipation of early signs of change leads to better decisions.
In many ways the key uncertainty on the horizon is the increasing pace of change, with the consequent need for flexibility and agility. This means that large investments in fixed capital assets become more risky than small-scale investments that can easily be switched to alternative uses. For the primary sector this may mean more rapid movement out of declining commodities or product lines before the market disappears.
“Shocks” such as potential disruptions to transport, communications and energy infrastructure mean that it will be essential for businesses to build in resilience with astute risk management: reducing perceived risks, increasing preparedness, and planning responses to adverse impacts.
There is also potential to take the strategic conversation further, in considering the likely impacts on strategic interests of combining impacts from the various drivers.22
For example, what are the risks for business viability if:
• the price of oil is higher due to increasing demand, and increasing scarcity and extraction costs, coupled with carbon pricing;
• oil supplies are less reliable;
• perceptions around “food miles” gain traction in markets;
• insurance costs are significantly higher than before?
The relevant question then becomes: What is needed to mitigate the risks, adapt to the changes, or seize the opportunities?
To illustrate this approach, Appendices 2 and 3 provide “impact maps” of the risks and opportunities arising out of combined change drivers for:
• energy cost of use and supply;
• rural business and community.
Ultimately, such mapping exercises could form the basis for scenario development, as indicated in Appendix 4.
Finally, there is a wider question about the nature of the response to uncertainy – whether incremental change is sufficient, or whether systemic/transformative change will be needed to build resilience.
22 Considering “combined impacts” may raise issues of system complexity, where the total impact on the system arises not from the sum of the impacts themselves, but from the sum of the interactions between them. This may not be an additive, linear phenomenon, and “emergent”, unpredictable patterns are possible.
Contact for Enquiries
Strategy and Performance Group
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry
Pastoral House
25 The Terrace
PO Box 2526, Wellington
Tel: +64 4 894 0593
Fax: +64 4 894 0738
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