AgriTech in New Zealand: a report on preserving farming knowledge and sector development

The food and fiber production sector plays a key role in the New Zealand economy, providing 8.8% of GDP and 12.4% of jobs. The country has more than 500 companies operating in the AgriTech sector, with an estimated annual revenue of 2–3 billion dollars. Despite the industry's potential, the report "Growing Innovation: The next wave of AgriTech for rural New Zealand" points to a number of obstacles: funding difficulties, lack of network infrastructure, data fragmentation, and slow regulation.

Senior Fellow at the Helen Clark Foundation Sarah Bell notes that technological progress can both foster rural development and exacerbate current problems if the right conditions are not created. Over the past decades, the number of farms in the country has decreased by 33%, and the area of cultivated land by 15%. The authors of the document emphasize: the innovations being introduced should not lead to the replacement of generational knowledge held by agricultural producers.

One of the main recommendations of the report was the creation of a "Living Knowledge Bank." This initiative is intended to systematize the unwritten experience of farmers — for example, the ability to determine the state of the soil, analyze weather conditions, and animal behavior. According to the developers, this will allow accumulated skills to be passed on to new generations of farmers, which is especially important in the context of farm transformation.

To develop the sector, experts urge the government to implement a system of adaptive regulation, improve communication infrastructure, and develop financial instruments that take into account the interests of family farms. Investment in technology is necessary to maintain the competitiveness of New Zealand products on the global market, where demands for traceability, environmental friendliness, and production efficiency are growing.