A place to solve food & fibre’s wicked problems

The Common Ground is a silo-breaker. The place where Aotearoa New Zealand’s food & fibre sector comes together to solve our wicked problems.

It’s a collaboration platform. A place where food & fibre thinkers and doers team-up, get funded and tackle our mega-challenges and opportunities – like on-farm energy, land-use change and rural prosperity.

Through smart organisational design and shared resources – like a central data exchange – it’s where we transform a history of duplication, into a future of trust and genuine collaboration.

Presented in partnership between AGMARDT and KPMG New Zealand and with input from a diverse range of stakeholders, The Common Ground begins as a thought leadership report to spur conversations and gather sector-wide feedback. Including yours.

“A place to supercharge a culture of collaboration in the food & fibre sector.”

ThePlatform

The Common Ground concept would have two main functions – host Communities of Action to solve shared challenges and serve as the food & fibre sector’s ‘back- office engine room’.

Communities of Action

In a more agile industry good ecosystem, our people and resources will gather around issues, instead of industries. Through The Common Ground governance and support structure, industry bodies can pool resources together to form cross-sector Communities of Action (while retaining their independence and sharpening their focus on industry-specific issues).

United in these Communities of Action, we can tackle sector-wide challenges and high-value opportunities like energy, rural wellbeing, high value exporting, zero carbon production systems, sustainable oceans, protection of Taonga (IP/ mātauranga), water quality & quantity, diversification of producer income, future workforce & agri-education, soil health, rural prosperity, biodiversity, animal welfare and adapting to climate volatility.

Back-office engine room

With 150 organisations in the industry good system, it’s not surprising we spend $9+ million annually duplicating back-office services like software, accounting, legal or HR. The Common Ground would host a voluntary single standard enterprise resource platform accessible to all participating organisations to cut these costs for all.

It’s also the ideal host for a shared data exchange service – reducing data-entry duplication for individual producers – and could deploy services most industry bodies need, but can’t always afford, like soil & water heath teams, R&D support, economists, futurists or policy analysts.

The Common Ground platform – simplified

“In times of crisis, the sector pulls together to make collective impact. We need to combine this same spirit with good design now, to get in front of the crises of the future.”

WHYNOW?

Without doubt, industry good organisations have been fundamental to the success of our sector. But what got us here, won’t get us there. The next food & fibre generation need a system capable of meeting unprecedented challenges and realising big opportunities.

The Common Ground is one vision for a fit-for-purpose future system. The platform uses collaborative design to build trust and overcome the four key constraints of the current system:

01 – An erosion of trust between members, organisations and regulators – causing the duplication of services everyone needs, like emissions reporting or rural wellbeing.
02 – A lack of aspirational thinking – having an election or levy vote every few years compels leaders to focus on short-term and emotive issues, when intergenerational (50+ years) planning is needed.
03 – Turf war – patch protection, siloed problem-solving and resistance to land-use change are happening as a result of organizing around single land-use identities (e.g. sheep & beef farmers, dairy farmers).
04 – Focusing on the farm gate, rather than markets – continuing to invest in production and efficiency at the producer level, instead of collaborating to better market NZ food & fibre products abroad.

“This is about setting-up the next generation for success. Let’s begin that conversation.”

Podcasts &Panel

In this Countrywide podcast series, we go deep on The Common Ground with the help of food & fibre producers, thinkers and leaders.

Hear from some of the team behind The Common Ground thought leadership report at the E Tipu 2024 summit.

Frequently Asked Questions

The industry good system refers to the 150+ organisations (operating with a combined $183m annual budget) that conducts research, advocacy, market development capability and other activity on behalf of New Zealand’s farmers, growers, fishers, foresters and other producers.The main source of funding for these activities are commodity levies paid by producers, as directed by the Commodity Levies Act (1990). Other organisations are funded through membership, fundraising and sponsorship from other industry good organisations or government.

Figure 1: An overview of the food and fibre industry good landscape

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Figure 2: Industry Good ‘good’

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The Common Ground would likely have a Board of Trustees made up of industry leaders, Taumata (Māori) and independents. Appointments would be based on skillsets needed for the future and could be nominated by Common Ground partners.

Communities of Action would have their own leadership groups, chosen on personal experience and mana regarding an issue, over specific roles or organisational affiliations.

Yes. Each organisation participating in The Common Ground or a Community of Action would retain its autonomy and determine for itself the right level of funding or other support for an initiative. Partners would also remain free to focus on industry-specific issues separately from The Common Ground.

For example, the Common Ground wouldn’t create a Community of Action around a specific tomato fungus. That would be best led by the relevant industry organisation(s). That same organisation may however consider contributing funds and capital to a pan-sector Community of Action on water quantity and quality – leveraging the resources of other Common Ground partners to get drive the most impact on that wicked problem.

The Common Ground would not be limited to industry good organisations – food & fibre businesses aligned to values and issues of a Community of Action would be welcome to join. This would open-up alternative funding options – like targeted government investment, public-private partnerships or foreign investment. The AgriZeroNZ joint venture on emissions reduction is a good example of how collaboration can open up new funding mechanisms and there are multiple international examples of ‘co-opetition clusters’ where partners financially contribute towards shared goals.

  • Funds directed at cross-sector issues are pooled from across the value chain, including producers, processors, exporters and others. This relieves the funding burden from producers, limits duplication & inefficiency and opens up new funding mechanisms.
  • Funds are not ringfenced to specific industries, gathering instead around cross-sector Communities of Action targeting shared mega-issues. This will shift the focus onto broad sector good, instead of impact in a specific industry silo.
  • Leadership will be appointed rather than elected.
  • Membership will be a long-term commitment. There will be no ‘annual opt-out’ to ensure long-term decision making and investment.

Figure 4: The Common Ground: System and stakeholders

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The Common Ground Governance body would be responsible for identifying cross-sector issues and uniting relevant partners into Communities of Action to tackle it. They would then support that Community to set their strategy, secure funding (either through Common Ground partners or externally) and execute on the issue. Most communities would be set up with a defined mission or lifespan, instead of operating indefinitely.

Figure 5: The Common Ground: How it works

The Common Ground How it Works
While the government is an important stakeholder, The Common Ground would be sector-led, and government-enabled. Government agencies would collaborate with Communities of Action when values and goals align. The AgriZeroNZ joint venture is a good example of this external partner relationship in action.

The Common Ground may undertake select advocacy where Communities of Action identify a need for it e.g. promoting the food & fibre sector as the best place to work. By their nature, Communities of Action would provide a clear point of engagement for government, reducing the need for duplicated lobbying and advocacy in these areas.

In other areas, organisations would continue to advocate on regulatory policies relevant to their industry.

In the long-term, The Common Ground would help foster the kind of collaborative, proactive behaviour and problem solving that would head-off regulation or market changes before they emerge. As an example, the New Zealand wine industry self-organised a sustainability programme decades before any government or market requirements – a result of strong market insight and internal partnership.

During conflict, partners would be directed back to the platform’s underlying principle – prioritise the broader sector issues over industry-specific interests. This would be set in a charter or other founding document, alongside other principles like a commitment not to disagree publicly or to spend more time discussing similarities than differences.

That’s a fair point. We tried to find a middle ground with the Common Ground – between calling for a more forceful structural change (like a revision of the Commodity Levies Act 1990) and yet more talk - and little action - towards genuine collaboration. The Common Ground sets up a proposed structure for industry good organisations to start to practice collaborative behaviour and build trust over time, starting with the issues where it makes most sense to work together. Over time, and as this sense of trust and collaboration becomes embedded in the sector, it’s plausible that some industry organisations might naturally consolidate.

In short, less wasteful duplication and the chance to invest more of your levy or membership dollar in solving the wicked issues threatening your bottom line - now and into the future.

Many producers currently pay levies and membership fees to multiple industry organisations, who at times work in opposition to each other or duplicate work. An approach like the Common Ground would support the industry good system to better align with the diversified food & farming business anticipated in the future.

The Common Ground isn’t radically different from previous attempts to form a collaborative structure. Some of these attempts have been successful (like the M Bovis or Covid 19 responses), while others have struggled (like He Waka Eke Noa). In times of crisis or when presented with a common enemy, the industry good sector has shown it can put its differences aside and collaborate for impact. But it’s not good enough to only come together in a crisis. We need to combine this same spirit with good design, building trust over time so we can proactively address the complex, slower burning problems that will drive future crises.In the case of He Waka Eke Noa, the sector chose to organise around one of the most complex and polarizing issues on the table. The collaboration failed because this issue was beyond our current ‘trust ceiling’ to solve together. Developing the level of trust to confront issues of this scale will take more than one generation of leader to build, but it needs to start now and within a collaborative framework set-up for the long-haul.
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Once the ground rules are set, the best way to build trust in the system would be to focus on issues with broad agreement across the industry good ecosystem, like Biosecurity or learning how we might best apply AI. As trust and the collaborative muscle grows, Communities can form around more complex issues.

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The Common Groundin the Media

Get involved

The Common Ground is just one vision for the future of industry good.

We’re interested in feedback from all corners of Aotearoa’s food & fibre sector on how we genuinely design for collaboration and set up future generations for success.

What do you think about The Common Ground?

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