Perceptions of MAF's regulatory impact on the grain and seed industry

1 Executive summary

Background
Key findings
Outlook

Background

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) conducts an annual outside-in review to gauge the perceptions of a subset of external stakeholders on MAF's performance.

The objective of this review is to gather and analyse opinions on the quality and impact of MAF-related compliance requirements on the grain and seed industry. This review analyses how MAF is experienced by service users in the grain and seed industry and provides a qualitative understanding of the quality and impact of MAF's regulatory activities on the industry.

A case study approach was taken for this review and a total of 18 interviews were conducted with grain and seed industry stakeholders. These interviews took place between February and April 2008.

Key findings

The review yielded a wealth of information on the perceptions of MAF's performance from grain and seed industry stakeholders. The key points are summarised below.

The overall findings indicated MAF is performing well as a regulator and that:

MAF's processes and systems to manage its compliance requirements are generally working well;
the industry understands the importance of biosecurity;
the industry reported no issues with MAF's management of the Commodity Levy Act;
MAF's compliance requirements are reported to have few negative impacts on business' economic growth and productivity, and MAF's biosecurity requirements return large positive impacts;
MAF's compliance requirements are not perceived to be duplicated or outdated;
the MAF biosecurity website is perceived to contain all the required information (although navigation is reportedly difficult sometimes);
interviewees understand MAF's role within government and believe MAF generally performs better than other regulators;
MAF is perceived to have a good relationship with the grain and seed industry;
MAF is perceived to be fair and consistent in its interactions with businesses.

The findings also indicated there are a number of areas of business performance that potentially require further consideration by MAF. These are:

clarify differences in roles between the Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) and MAF in relation to the HSNO Act;
review the impacts of import requirements on businesses levels of innovation;
reassess countries on the Importing Countries Phytosanitary Requirements register;
reassess timeframes for import clearances;
examine interface between Customs and MAF to streamline certain requirements where possible;
consider interfacing processes conducted by both ERMA and MAF;
ensure consistency at a national level for import requirements;
review MAF website to improve accessibility of import requirements;
up-skill MAF inspectors' expertise and knowledge on seed and grain and the wider arable industry;
enhance customer-centric culture and attitude among MAF staff;
enhance collaboration with the industry;
facilitate stakeholder relationships and improve MAF understanding of the industry;
promote and support MAF staff authority and decision making.

The review also shed light on a number of emerging grain and seed industry issues that may be worthy of future consideration by MAF. These issues are:

the industry experiencing rapid, unpredictable change;
biofuels seemingly posing a threat to New Zealand's export seed industry;
the world becoming increasingly biosecurity conscious and import restrictions are getting tighter;
farmers now have more options for land use;
seed testers are a very skilled, yet ageing and part-time workforce.

Outlook

The findings of this review suggest that MAF's regulatory framework for the grain and seed industry is sound and generally acceptable to the industry. While the regulatory framework is not "broken", there are some regulatory implementation issues that may require further consideration by MAF. Similarly, the impact of MAF's regulatory requirements was also found to be generally acceptable to the industry, though there were some identified concerns with time taken to clear imports and the restricted access to genetically modified and hybridised seeds. MAF was also considered to be better than, or as good as, most other regulators in New Zealand, despite some concerns regarding organisational attitude, particularly "staff authoritarianism". There was also a concern amongst interviewees about the level of knowledge and understanding of the grain and seed industry amongst MAF staff.

This review provides a picture of MAF's performance from one group of stakeholders: the grain and seed industry. The general picture provided correlates with other stakeholder feedback MAF has received and the majority of the "issues for attention" have also been identified in earlier work. These studies found that the standard of service provided could be improved by focusing on service quality "fundamentals".

Thus, improved regulatory implementation by MAF is about continually focusing on the basics of customer service delivery. Accordingly, communication, collaboration and customer-focus appear to be the key words for MAF to consider going forward.

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