Boss backs new on-farm team

Those frontline roles are vast and include in biosecurity at airports, ports and international mail centres to protect the sector from pests and diseases; in food safety we have people at meat works and visiting food producers to ensure our vital export sector is meeting safety and market access requirements.

In forests MPI teams provide advice for appropriate planting; while in fisheries through observers, who spend many weeks at sea on boats, and through fisheries officers who make sure fishing is sustainable and will be enjoyed for generations to come.

When I started at MPI, I spent a lot of time listening to feedback from the sector about what it expected of us. There was some frank feedback about a need for MPI to have a much closer understanding of the sector's needs and challenges.

One of the things brought up time and again was the need for a return to a greater frontline presence on farm and in orchards to help people navigate and adjust to a changing world. People had a good point, there was a clear gap in the on-the-ground help we provided to agriculture especially.

We have worked hard to address that and developed our On Farm Support team. We currently have about 40 people in regions across the country helping farmers and growers. They are people with strong sector knowledge and an understanding of their communities. We purposely did not poach people from existing private advisory services. Through events like Cyclone Gabrielle our people were out helping, mucking in and providing advice.

The ability of MPI to quickly develop, establish, and pay out money for Cyclone Gabrielle recovery grants in February is testament to the close connections we've built with the sector and the first-hand information our people in the regions were providing.

We know and understand the private sector has a significant and important advisory role. Taking that into account, we established the Career Pathways Scheme last year to support independent advisory companies and whenua Māori entities to train new staff. Employers taking part in the scheme are eligible to receive $22,500 a year for up to three years to help cover salary and training cost of new advisers. To date, about 40 people are part of the scheme.

We know how important it is to work closely with the sector and we've taken big steps to do so in recent years - whether it be through biosecurity responses, ensuring the sector could operate throughout the pandemic, investigating new ways of doing things through joint investments, or providing more on-the-ground help. I'm proud of that.

Ray Smith is director-general of MPI.