Consumers must trust our products

05-07-2010 | Bob Edlin

A new boss for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry was signalled when the State Services Commission invited applications (closing on July 14) for the job of director general.

Murray Sherwin will be stepping down in November.

"Nine years are more than enough for any CEO in any organisation," he told Farmers Weekly.

A new name for the ministry is in the offing too after a restructuring that has brought the Food Safety Authority back into its domain.

The FSA's head, Andrew McKenzie, departed last week.

Among the challenges for the new chief executive, says Sherwin, will be "just maintaining the focus that Andrew has brought to driving an international regulatory regime that fits its purposes and works for our exporters".

Deputy director-general Barry O'Neil is leading the job of amalgamating and consolidating operations.

The revamp is expected to have been completed by early next year.

"We may drop the MAF name and the existing branding as well," said Sherwin.

"That's up for review.

"We are trying to find something which is a bit more encompassing of the breadth of stakeholder interests that we have in the combined organisation, from agriculture, horticulture and forestry through to environmental and food safety stakeholders, trade issues and all the rest of it.

"So there is a lot of work to be done. A new chief executive coming in from November will have plenty on his or her plate."

And Sherwin's future?

"About three months holiday for starters, reconnect with wife and family..." he said.

He isn't job-hunting yet but anticipates taking up a non-executive job, preferably in agri-economics and finance.

So what has given him the most satisfaction from his work at MAF?

"The mantra right from the outset has been putting MAF back at the top table, in the sense it had lost its way a little bit with multiple restructuring and other things over the 80s," he said.

A big organisation - with 7500-8500 people at its peak, he recalls - had been carved up. Fisheries was moved out, forestry was moved in, more than half the CRIs came out of MAF, so did ASURE and AgriQuality and - later - the Food Safety Authority.

"It shed a lot of functions and ended up back with around 900-1000 people when I came.

"So it had lost a lot of its impetus and its drive and its sense of where it was going."

Sherwin thinks MAF is now recognised as an essential and influential agency around major issues including economic growth and development, science and innovation, trade policy, environmental issues and border sector.

"So I think we have done a lot on that."

Another achievement has been the with the biosecurity system - a complete remake.

"I think we've lifted the capability of biosecurity enormously," Sherwin said.

"It's also gone up hugely in public and political interest and expectations have run ahead of capability.

"We are light years ahead of where we were."

Some MAF work is not much seen by the public.

Crown Forestry is effectively a commercial forestry operation run from MAF, mostly Crown-owned trees on Maori owned land. It's a $120 million a year venture.

"If it was a stand-alone company it would be a top 200 company or thereabouts and we run it with five public servants."

It has absorbed Timberlands West Coast "and we'll have that at least at break-even point, after years of losses, within the next year or two."

It makes a significant contribution to iwi development, handing functioning, commercially viable forestry operations over to iwi "as quickly as we can".

Another area is animal welfare, "which has absolutely exploded in public-political profile. We have a small team doing good work raising standards and raising consciousness and awareness."

Then there has been the substantial organisational development.

Much new work has been generated in the areas of climate change and the emissions trading scheme and much more resource has been provided for biosecurity.

So how does Sherwin see MAF's relations with farmers?

"That's a good question," he muses.

"MAF has gone through a lot of transitions over the years and I still run into farmers who still wonder what happened to that nice young farm advisory officer that we haven't had for 20-odd years.

"And I think a lot of farmers are still a bit puzzled about what the organisation is and struggle to keep pace with the shifts we have had to make."

Before Food Safety was brought back in, 80 per cent of the staff were involved with biosecurity.

Farmers do recognise biosecurity as one of their critical risks "but I don't think they quite appreciate the organisation has been re-orientated so strongly in that direction over the years."

Farmers MAF engaged with would generally tell him they liked the quality of the ministry's people.

"But they don't always like the messages we are giving them - like ETS or some of the animal welfare or environmental issues.

"That's fine. We are there to pursue the national interest as we see it, not to be blind advocates for farmers.

"So I would expect there to be a bit of a rub around some of those issues.

"And of course a lot of farmers, foresters and horticulturalists and others would prefer that biosecurity was a gold-plated, ever-sure business for them. Well, it never will be, so that's one of the things that causes a bit of stress."

The big issues ahead for his successor?

In a nutshell, it's lifting the performance and integrity of the biological value chain.

"It sounds a bit like policy-speak but it's as few words as you can get it into," Sherwin said.

Lifting the primary sector's performance embraces the primary growth partnership which entails new relationships with primary industries around growth, innovation and research and development.

The integrity of the biological value chain relates to making primary industries much more customer-focused and customer-driven.

It covers a raft of issues that give buyers confidence in the product they are putting in their mouths - confidence that it is what it says it is, that it is has been produced by sustainable methods to appropriate animal welfare standards and so on.

This builds on New Zealand's competitive advantage and on the strength and effectiveness of it regulatory regimes.

Those regimes must deliver product that can be trusted.

"I think that's the big issue for in the years ahead."

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