NZFGA Executive, Richard Mangin Provides Thoughts on Advocacy.

 Advocacy and Biosecurity continues to grow as an area that requires time input from our Association, with key areas over recent months concerning:

• as previously discussed, the risk of Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) and meetings of those industries potentially affected,

• the arrival of Myrtle rust, and here we see in the media the work that NZPPI has been doing on behalf of the nursery industry

• Ministry of Primary industry (MPI) wanting to form Government Industry agreements (GIA) to plan for how pest incursions will be dealt with and who pays for the response

Alongside this the association is also called upon for input into issues around

• plant imports for example a recent notification of a change to the import requirements for tissue culture plants to mitigate the risk of Xylella fastidiosa

• Pesticide regulation, such as a recent call by the EPA for input into a request to increase the application rates for Luna Privilege and Luna Sensation

As an association we are represented on both PMAC (Plant Market Access council, which provides communication on market access between industry and MPI) and GERMAC (Germplasm advisory committee, which provides communication between Germplasm importers and MPI)

MPI increasingly wants a closer relationship with industry in dealing with Biosecurity issues, and is expecting to deal with a unified and co-ordinated industry as they do with Kiwifruit NZ, Pipfruit NZ and NZPPI (NZ Plant producers inc.).  They are also looking to charge the cost of biosecurity clean-ups back to the affected industry; this is the basis of the GIA (Government industry Agreement) process.

As an association we need to consider if we want to retain total control over how we are represented, or if we are happy to be represented by a larger body, by joining with NZPPI or HortNZ.

As growers we need to decide if we are prepared to pay to be members of an association that will represent our best interests and ensure that we have some degree of control over our destiny (such as the way that Chris Smellie has represented us on the BMSB meetings ensuring we are not adversely impacted). Otherwise we hand over all of these decisions to MPI who will apportion costs as they see appropriate.