Fast-Track Consenting Bill Submission Template

The Government has proposed a new Bill that has the undue power to override almost every environmental law that has been established in Aotearoa over the past four decades. This bill will give them the power to sneak destructive development projects in through the back. The Fast-track Approvals Bill is a Minister-controlled and obscenely undemocratic piece of legislation designed to give environmentally damaging projects the go-ahead with little or no consideration of the potential long-term environmental and social impacts. The Select Committee is calling for submissions from the public, and we have until 19 April to have our say.

As advocates for food sovereignty and security, we see this Bill as a further threat to the ability of Aotearoa to sustain food-secure communities into the future. It is clear that the aim of the Bill is to prioritise economic opportunities at any environmental cost, including further degradation of the natural resources that growers, food producers and all of us in Aotearoa depend upon, such as freshwater, healthy soils, access to land and a healthy atmosphere. We are also concerned about the limited capacity for tangata whenua and other affected authorities and experts to provide comment on projects destined for approval.

We understand that many of our members and followers will be as outraged and anxious as we are about this legislation, which the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) is calling ‘constitutionally questionable’. We have prepared a template for you to use in preparing your own submissions, whether as individuals or from your organisation/small business. We have used the submission prepared by the EDS along with information from Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, the Ministry for the Environment, and NZ scientists to inform this short submission template. 

Please feel free to copy and paste, but remember that a submission is most impactful when it speaks to your own context and specific concerns. 

Further action:

• Sign the open letter from James Shaw

• Read the EDS submission for much more in-depth content and inspiration for your own submission. They have also released a submission template.

• Listen to the webinar on the EDS submission on the Fast-track Approvals Bill

Submission template

SUBMIT HERE

Submitter Details

Full name: [the name of your organisation, farm, business etc or your own name]
Address for service: [the registered address of your organisation, farm, business etc or your own address]
Contact: Name(s) of contact(s) - only necessary if you’re submitting on behalf of your organisation, farm, business etc.
Email: [contact email]

Introduction

1. [Your organisation, farm, business etc or name] thanks the Environment Select Committee for the opportunity to make a submission on the Fast-track Approvals Bill (Bill).

2. [Add a sentence about your organisation, farm, business etc or yourself here. What do you do? Where do you live? Any other context you’d like to add?]

3. [Name of your organisation, farm, business etc or ‘I’] strongly oppose(s) the Bill. It is clear that the aim of the Bill is to prioritise economic opportunities at any environmental cost, including the further degradation of natural resources that growers, food producers and all of us in Aotearoa depend upon for our livelihoods.

Why [Your organisation, farm, business etc or ‘I’]  oppose(s) the Bill

Here are our key points - feel free to expand upon these or list your own.

• To grow local, nutritious food for our communities, we rely upon a healthy environment. Both the global environment and te taiao (environment) of Aotearoa New Zealand are under extreme stress, with freshwater quality, biodiversity, solid health and the climate all on the decline. The Bill presents blatant and unacceptable disregard for these life-sustaining systems, with little to no consideration of environmental impact required. 

• The Bill is plainly not about speeding up the process. There may be some time savings, but by far the main impact of the Bill is to disempower the public and affected parties, and to bypass any meaningful testing of environmental effects.  

• The purpose of the Bill is completely one-sided - it only recognises regional and national benefits and not environmental effects, but it takes priority over all other considerations.

• The Bill provides only extremely limited opportunities for tangata whenua and other affected authorities and experts to provide comment on referral of projects to the fast-track pathway and then projects destined for approval. Ten working days is a completely insufficient and unreasonable time period for consultation with those who are allowed to have a say (for example, iwi authorities and local government) and there is little room for comment from groups, organisations, experts and others who will be affected by the decisions under consideration.

• The Bill provides development ministers with decision-making powers beyond those any politician should hold within parliament - it is anti-democratic and nonsensical. 

• The ministers are under no obligation to take advice from experts on the environmental impact of projects referred to the fast-track process, another mechanism restricting the opportunities for informed input.

• The Bill is inconsistent with Aotearoa New Zealand’s international obligations under the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which commits us to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the Convention on Biological Diversity which commits us to conserving biodiversity. There is no requirement for considering the potential emissions of projects, which we find unacceptable for any new legislation amidst a climate crisis. 

• Furthermore, the Bill explicitly refers to “development of natural resources, including ... petroleum”, paving the way for oil and gas exploration and extraction. 

• There are insufficient criteria to exclude projects that could be environmentally detrimental. Even projects that involve prohibited activities under the RMA -the most environmentally dangerous activities in sensitive locations - and mining in national parks and marine reserves are not excluded, and the Ministers can choose to approve them regardless of the Expert Panel’s recommendations.

• The intent to favour commercial interest over community and environmental wellbeing is clear in the purpose of the Bill. We believe this will be at the detriment of the natural environment and the health of our people.

• The Bill is also inconsistent with the government’s own stated goal of evidence-based decision making (s17F of your coalition agreement).

  Concluding points

• We submit that the Bill should not be passed. A robust and inclusive discussion about RMA reform is instead needed.

• We urge you to slow the pace of all environmental law reform (including repeal of both the Natural and Built Environment Act 2023 and Spatial Planning Act 2023; proposed changes to the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity 2023 (including ceasing implementation of new Significant Natural Areas); and replacing the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020) to allow for proper democratic consultation and consider advice from environmental experts.

• We wish to be heard in support of our submission (you can add this if you would like to speak to the select committee kanohi-ki-te-kanohi (face-to-face) at Parliament or via video conferencing)

Deer milk is not the future: How property impacts agroecological food production

by Olivia Oldham
PhD Candidate | Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems, University of Edinburgh

If you're reading this newsletter, I probably don't need to explain to you that the food system is not working—either for people or planet—and that agroecology and food sovereignty are alternatives worth striving for. While there are lots of things we could be doing to work towards those goals, one of the key elements we should be thinking about is land. And, because the rules of property structure, things like who gets access to land, how they are able to access it, and what they are able to do with it once they've got it, then we also need to be thinking about property.

What is property?

But what is property? You might think it means ownership, or 'the stuff I own'. And that would be fair enough—that's what most people mean when they talk about property. But for a lawyer, property means something a bit different. It means a relationship between people about a thing, not the thing itself. 

Sometimes, lawyers talk about that relationship being made up of a "bundle of rights". Think of it like a bundle of sticks. Each of those sticks represents a right. Keeping with property in land, those rights might include the right to keep others out; or the right to make decisions about what happens on the land; or even the right to alienate—that is, to sell or otherwise get rid of it. We might, if we were being particularly radical, even think about some of those sticks representing a responsibility, too. Maybe, the responsibility not to degrade ecosystems, or the responsibility to use the land for the common good (like in Brazil, where this responsibility is actually set out in the constitution).

So the idea of private ownership is actually a very particular bundle of rights that has become so common that we tend to just equate it with property, full stop. But, in fact, there are lots of different ways of putting that bundle together—and we'll get to that a bit later.

Private ownership: how good?

First, let's deal with private ownership, which is at the heart of our system of property and farming here in Aotearoa New Zealand. People like private ownership for a lot of reasons. The rights I mentioned earlier—keeping others out, making decisions, and alienation—mean that farmers who own their land can feel secure. No landlord can kick them off or tell them how to farm, and making long-term investments in farm infrastructure or ecosystems feels less risky. That right to sell, in particular, can be appealing because it allows the land to be used as leverage for a mortgage, or as an asset the farmer can cash out to fund their retirement or support their kids to buy their first farm, or whatever else they may want to do.

The problem is, these benefits of private ownership—while they can be great for individual farmers, and can be appealing for agroecological producers, too—can have negative impacts for the food system as a whole. They can actually end up undermining efforts to shift the food system towards agroecology and food sovereignty. Not to mention that, in Aotearoa New Zealand, the entire system of private ownership is built upon the dispossession of tangata whenua.

For starters, that autonomy that can be so good for the individual farmer, also means that landowners are free to farm in ways that degrade te taiao and that don't produce healthy, nutritious food for local, regional and national communities but instead pursue whatever goals the farmer wants—usually, profit.

"Ah," I hear you say, "but if it's a good farmer, who is growing agroecologically and wants to promote food sovereignty, then they don't care about profit! They are motivated by other things, like stewardship of ecosystems, respect for Papatūanuku, and care for the people they feed!"

And in some ways, you'd be right. Most agroecological farmers are driven by those things. My best friend is one of them, as are many others who I know and deeply respect. If I ever get myself out from behind a computer and into a field, I will be too. But the problem is, private property ownership creates a system where this is no longer about choices. 

At some point, if the farmer wants to keep farming, they are almost inevitably going to have to prioritise profit over some of their other goals, unless they (a) are very lucky; or (b) inherited their land or the money to buy it (which you could say is the same thing). Because that famous 'security' being a landowner gives you is only secure as long as you keep up with your mortgage repayments—that is, the cost of land. 

Alienability, the right to get rid, is so central to private ownership that some people have argued that, without this right, it isn't private ownership at all! But when you're behind on your mortgage repayments, that 'right' starts to look very much like a curse. 

Here's where it gets kind of complicated. 

We all know what happens when mortgage repayments aren't met—eventually, the bank will repossess the property, and sell it to someone else to get their investment back. Usually, the person who is able to afford that land is the person with the most money. This can lead to land concentration, where more and more land is owned by fewer and fewer people—but we're not going to focus on that today. Instead, we're going to focus on what determines the price of the land at the time that it's sold. First and foremost, land values are determined by how much money people think they can make off the land in the future—as rent, profit, or both. Those amounts are determined by what has been produced on the land in the past, as well as what the land might be able to be used for in the future—whether that's for a dairy conversion, planting pine forest, or subdividing it for a housing development. 

This has major consequences for agroecological farmers. Not only because, very often, it pushes them onto marginal land which might be less productive, less climactically favourable, or very far away from markets, or even prices them out of the market entirely; but perhaps even more importantly because it means that when those agroecological farmers do manage to buy the land, their mortgage repayments reflect what they could be making if they didn't prioritise their agroecological principles and instead farmed to maximise their yield—and their profit. They can do this by lowering their ecological and social standards (and the first thing they do, typically, is to 'self-exploit'—meaning that they work themselves to the bone and barely pay themselves (if at all)—to make the numbers add up. Because they so want to make it work). Or, they can do this by seeking out higher value markets, like organics—which partly explains why organic food often costs so much, and why lots of organic farmers in Aotearoa New Zealand are focused on exports, rather than domestic markets. Sometimes, they might turn to novel products—like kiwifruit once was, or the recent moves by Pāmu to develop deer milk, into a marketable product.

Farmers in most cases are, to use a fancy term, 'market dependent'—meaning they are forced, economically speaking, to sell what they produce on the market, in order to earn enough money to pay for the land. So, in the end, it often doesn't matter very much whether farmers want to farm agroecologically—the cost of land, which is a direct consequence of private ownership's central right of alienability (within a capitalist system), can force them to undermine those goals. 

We also shouldn't forget that these dynamics of private ownership are not just harmful to farmers and the food system—they are also central to the continued dispossession of tangata whenua, and the ongoing exclusion of Māori from access to and authority over their ancestral lands and territories. 

That seems bad…what do we do?

The good thing about seeing property as a bundle of rights (and responsibilities) is that we can repackage that bundle in different ways. One good idea that has been floating around for a very long time is the commons. Basically, the commons is a way of governing a resource (so, a property relation) that is neither public nor private, but collectively managed by a self-governing, well-defined community. And they have the potential to overcome some of those problems with private ownership.

You may have heard of the 'tragedy of the commons', or the idea that the commons can't work because humans are tragically but unavoidably selfish. This is a simple theory but unfortunately, it's simply incorrect. It has been repeatedly demonstrated—both by mainstream economists as well as by many traditional and Indigenous societies—that it is entirely possible for communities to effectively govern resources, given appropriate institutional design.

There are, around the world, a number of organisations building on the principles and ideas of the commons to develop new ways of understanding and putting into practice property rights and responsibilities that might be more enabling of agroecological, food sovereign food systems. For example, in the UK (where I work) there is the Ecological Land Cooperative, which holds land collectively and grants secure, lifetime leases to new entrant farmers at affordable rates, so long as they adhere to agroecological management provisions. The Agrarian Trust in the USA, and Kulturland in Germany do similar things. Another approach is the idea of public-commons partnerships, where the local council and a commons association made up of community members and different stakeholders co-own and co-govern local land. At a bigger scale, the Scottish Parliament has passed a number of land reform laws which give communities a right of first refusal on local land, and even has (some) money available to help them buy it. 

Here in Aotearoa, Village Agrarians is working to put issues around land access and, crucially, land ownership, on the agenda. Their land matching service works to reduce barriers to land access within the existing framework of property rights. More broadly they are working to develop greater awareness of the ways in which private ownership of land undermines agroecology, ultimately aiming to be part of developing alternative forms of ownership and stewardship.

Of course, any commoning initiatives here in Aotearoa New Zealand would have to be built upon an understanding that much of the land which could be 'commoned' was stolen from tangata whenua. This means that any work to begin 'commoning' land would need to centre movements and demands for land return, and ongoing conversations on constitutional transformation, such as the discussions and action stemming from the Matike Mai report. Land commoning would look different in Aotearoa New Zealand than in other parts of the world—and this is something to be embraced and addressed head on, with tangata whenua leading in any endeavour. This may look like a public-commons-iwi partnership, for instance. Or it may look like existing iwi owners holding farmland in trust for ecological stewardship by whānau or others. It may look like land reform that creates an iwi right to buy as well as, or instead of, a community right to buy. Or it may look like none of these—commoning may not even be the right framing. The key here is to centre Māori leadership, and for Pākehā and other tauiwi to be willing to ensure that any agenda for shifting property relations reflects Māori needs and desires.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't think deer milk is the future. But the commons, as one possible foundation for a decolonial vision for a food sovereign, agroecological Aotearoa New Zealand, just might be. 

Grower Spotlight - Eve Clarke of Forage Flowers

I believe that if we use our joy as a compass to guide our actions, the world will be a kinder and more beautiful place. 

Eve, the founder of Forage Flowers, gives us a brightly colored, and fragrant example of how following your joy is good for the world. Doing what she loves, Eve has started a small flower farm, growing beautiful, spray free flowers in West Auckland. 

“My favorite thing is giving people flowers,” she told me. Involved in horticulture and ecology work for years, Eve found in her days as an ecologist she was most inspired by collecting native flowers and arranging them in her kitchen. Even as a kid, she knew where all the freesias grew along the beach. She loved to pick them and offer them to her neighbors and people she passed on her walks. 

Now, Eve grows as many flowers as she can in her small 250 square meter garden, using dense and succession planting methods to ensure she always has blooms on the way (while still leaving plenty for the bees!). Starting Forage Flowers was not easy - Eve was building beds and learning to arrange and sell flowers all at once with the help of her husband, Sam. She was up into the wee hours of the morning every Friday night, preparing to sell flowers at The Shed Collective, a plant based market in West Auckland, on Saturdays during her first year of business in 2020. 

Through her experience, Eve has learned some concerning things about the floral industry that demonstrate how important it is to consider where our flowers come from. She explained to me that many flowers sold in New Zealand are imported from overseas, and there is no requirement that their country of origin be printed, as there is with food. Imported flowers are fumigated to kill all bugs, and are dipped in roundup (glyphosate) before they come to the country to prevent them from growing here. She learned this when she asked a florist about buying some chrysanthemums to use to start her own from cuttings. The sad news from the florist was: it won’t work due to all the chemicals they have been treated with! 

The lack of transparency in the floral industry makes it all the more important to buy locally grown, spray free flowers. Eve is happy that flower farms are becoming more popular in Aotearoa, and that flower collectives are starting around the country. The community of flower farmers is supportive and excited to share information to help make sustainable, quality flowers available here. 

Forage Flowers is growing too. “Once it’s not your hobby anymore, it gets a bit hard,” Eve told me. All summer last year, she kept picking and picking to keep the flowers coming, and people would contact her all week to order more flowers. Happily, Forage Flowers will have some more hands when they hire their first employee soon. It is important to Eve to do everything well, and by that standard she is also committed to paying employees a living wage. 

Along with expanding their team, Eve is hoping to expand the gardens. She is looking for opportunities for land sharing in West Auckland so that Forage will have room to grow. Landsharing is beneficial for all parties involved in that growers can access land without needing to purchase it, and the person sharing the land gets to enjoy the benefits of a grower stewarding a part of their land. Eve’s gardens are a dream for pollinators and humans alike, and anyone who shares land with Forage Flowers would be very lucky. We hope Eve finds a good opportunity to landshare soon, and that this type of relationship becomes more common and accessible for new growers.  

To summarize her work as a new flower farmer, Eve reflected to me: “You bring people joy with your job. It’s not often you get to do that.” 

If you live in the Auckland area, be sure to check out Forage Flowers and treat yourself to some of the joy Eve is growing this summer. She will continue to sell flowers at The Shed Collective, doing bouquet orders for special occasions and birthdays, and she is hoping to have a roadside stall up and running at the farm soon. You can see the latest from Forage Flowers on their Instagram or Facebook.

Written by Naomi Morgan
Photos by Eve Clarke

Summer Editorial – Land Use

Has the Covid-19 Pandemic ‘Sped Up’ Progress in Sustainable Agriculture? 

One of the main narratives that came after lockdown last year, was a grassroots push to ‘build back better’. Central Government took this on and pumped funding into green initiatives to boost the green economy. This is fantastic in New Zealand, however globally, it is hard to tell whether the pandemic has upped the pace of change, or whether it is being way-laid like other work since Covid-19 took the world by a storm. Also, does this apply to sustainable initiatives broadly, or has land use and agriculture has been a particular target.

To look into this more, we may be able to assess progress by looking at global commitments and Summits. Has sustainable agriculture been discussed as part of the solution since Covid highlighted food insecurity and inequity? 

This year, the UN Food Summit was held in New York in September. The UN’s Food Summit was a little low key in the media this year, it may have been a bit shadowed by the lead up to COP26 in Glasgow. By looking at the UN Food Summit, we may be able to assess whether work in this area is being accelerated in light of Covid-19, or whether it has been slowed due to the disruption. 

An impressive engagement process with stakeholders around the world was undertaken over the 18 months in advance, gathering ideas and research in order to inform solutions being created at the Summit. Given the work achieved in this engagement process, I would say Covid-19 has not significantly slowed down engagement work in this area. 

The Summit also focussed on ‘Prosperity’ as one of the three core areas for the Summit, identifying that agriculture has the potential to play a significant role in recovering from the pandemic, and the inequality in our food system that the pandemic has highlighted. Have a look at this page to find out more about how the UN Food Summit process was run for 2021. This also indicates that globally, Covid-19 has emphasised the need for action on the food system front.

• Prosperity, “Leading an inclusive and equitable recovery from COVID-19”: While representing a tenth of the global economy and supporting the livelihoods of over one billion people, food systems are a focus of inequality. They also hold the potential to be a powerful driver for the recovery. We need to double-down on our determination to ensure that all human beings can enjoy their fundamental human rights and prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social, and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.

To those engaged in the process, and in light of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the vision of the 2030 Agenda is as relevant as ever. The urgency even greater.

Thirdly, the Summit identified ‘Action Tracks’ to be implemented following the Summit. Action Track 5, ‘Build Resilience to Vulnerabilities, Shocks and Stress’ specifically relates to action needed to respond to Covid 19 and prepare our food system for shocks such as pandemics. The Action Tracks also identified the need to address barriers to smallholder farmers and small-scale enterprises along the food value chain to improve environmental and social outcomes.

For these three reasons, I would say the Covid-19 global pandemic has not slowed down action in improving the current food system, or taken away from it, but rather highlighted the need to be urgent about changing it. 

However, identifying the need for the change to our food system in the Summit does not necessarily indicate real change on the ground. What were the solutions suggested? Does it include land sharing to address inequity in access to land-use? Land ownership has strongly been linked with wealth and power over history. How do we make sharing a more significant part of our economy so that we can redistribute resources and resolve inequity in land access? These days, sharing seems to be all about social media. How do we make sharing more normal in day-to-day life? This is where Village Agrarians come in. Start small, in our own region, by pairing those who would like to share their land, with those who are looking for land access. This feels like a huge win, so simple but not very commonly done. 

The UN Food Summit pulled together a long list of problems and actions. There are about 2,000 actions alone! And yes, land access has been identified as an issue causing inequity in our food system. The proposed solution is to improve local and domestic procurement processes to support local producers, and to enhance private-public partnerships to mobilise local finance to improve equity. When wanting to look further into the solution for improving land access and tenure, Solution 44: ‘Improve security of land tenure, land banking & community-based mechanisms on land rights & control over resources’, the sheet came up blank. If only Village Agrarians had been there, we would have loved to work this out with them, perhaps the work on this is still coming. 😊 You can explore the issues and solutions explored in the Summit on this page. 

Even if the solution has not quite been ironed out and put in place, it is heartening to know that it has been highlighted on a global platform as an issue that must be addressed, even in a global pandemic crisis, making it even more important to resolve.

Good News Story for Land Use -  A Grass Roots Victory

It’s always good to share great news. Australia has been heavy on the mining, but recently, a proposed mine was rejected in favour of protecting horticultural land. Kalbar Operations proposed an open cut mineral sands mine which would have had a footprint of 16.75 Km2. It would have operated for 8-15 years, and caused irreversible damage to a horticultural sector. The mine was proposed for an area in Eastern Gippsland which produces food for Victoria and New South Wales, known as one of Victoria’s most prosperous food bowls. 

A passionate grassroots group wrote submissions, banding together to fight the mining proposal, and won!

This may just be the turning of a tide. Rather than valuing an extracting, linear economy, government planning may just be changing to value long term land use, and seeing the benefits of horticulture in society.  

Community Spotlight - Grow Wanaka

At Village Agrarians, we were excited to learn about the work of Grow Wanaka, a new organization contributing to the growing community food system in Wanaka and the Lakes District. While their physical space is a small approximately 28 meter by 17 meter garden, their vision is far reaching. Their desire to create a vibrant educational hub where community members can learn, connect and grow drives the group's action. As Chairperson Chloe Rowe explains, once you have an idea, you just need to start and see how it goes. Preparing to enter their first growing season, this is exactly what Grow Wanaka is doing. 

“It’s crazy that people who need food can’t afford it, and there is so much empty space (to grow food)” Chloe said to me as she explained her personal motivation for her work with Grow Wanaka. After Covid Lockdown in 2020, some community members connected over the idea of starting a community garden as a way to produce nutritious food and bring community members together. While there are a few market gardens in the Wanaka area, the group saw a gap for a community garden that could divert organic waste from landfill to produce nutritious food for the community, so they took up the project. 

Their journey to find their small plot of land was not without roadblocks. In looking for suitable land, Grow Wanaka was surprised to find some community resistance from potential neighbouring properties. However, the support the group has found outweighs any objections they faced. They were approached by a private landholder who was open to their goals to build a community garden. With community support to go ahead, Grow Wanaka is making a conscious effort to leave the site better than they found it. They are in the process of designing and building a beautiful garden which will be lovingly cared for. 

They are aiming for a “template hopefully others will be able to recreate,” Chloe explained. And their vision is not just for producing food, but for creating a system which gives back to the earth. Currently, Grow Wanaka is setting up a vermicomposting collection program. This will divert food scraps from the landfill, and build healthy soil to grow nourishing food. They have both Iwi and district council support for the project, and are currently seeking consent from the regional council to get vermicomposting activities underway. Many local businesses and organizations have already provided great support for the project and they look forward to connecting and collaborating with many more throughout the process. 

Part of our ethics at Village Agrarians is a belief that equitable food systems include fair compensation for those working on the land and Chloe told me that Grow Wanaka share this vision. They hope that the vermicomposting program will be self-generating employment, charging businesses a fee for collecting scraps. The castings can then go into the garden, and the plants will go back to people. This circular system will simultaneously generate employment, reduce waste to the landfill, provide an education space for community members, and give back to the community in the form of fresh veggies.  

Because Grow Wanaka is not focusing on growing for the seasonal market, it gives them more flexibility and diversity in what crops they can grow. They are able to plant long growing crops such as pumpkins and broccoli, and experiment with methods such as the Three Sisters to grow beans, corn and squash together, creating a fun and relaxed growing and learning environment.  

In the future, to guarantee sustainability and longevity of the project, they would love to be able to employ a garden manager whose purpose is in keeping the garden managed and looked after, and who can focus on managing the volunteers and visitors to the space.

And who will eat the food that Grow Wanaka will produce? Ideally, whoever needs it. Right now, their vision is that food will be available to those who volunteer, and surplus will go back to the community. Grow Wanaka will be partnering with Food For Love, the Community Food Hub and the Foodbank to distribute produce and increase food resilience in the area. 

When I asked Chloe about her personal interest in growing food she replied, “hands in the dirt is my solace. Put me in the dirt, I’m happy.” As Grow Wanaka enters its first growing season, we hope more people can experience the joy of putting their hands in the dirt and contribute to this little garden making a big change. 

Because Grow Wanaka is a new organization and still growing, they are looking to build capacity and resources in a couple of areas. If you have any skills in funding applications, vermicomposting, or are interested in supporting the work that Grow Wanaka is undertaking, please get in touch with them at wanakacommunitygarden@gmail.com.

Written by Naomi Morgan
Photos from Chloe Rowe

Dylan - Crooked Roots Farm

When people are able to step on the land where their food comes from, it sparks something special. A connection between people, and the earth. Dylan Parker, who is involved in many food growing projects in the Christchurch area, knows this first hand. When he was a kid, Dylan’s grandparents owned a biodynamic farm in Fairlie. He spent time there, as well as in the Marlborough Sounds, foraging for berries and mushrooms. Deeply passionate about growing food and cultivating a relationship with land, he dedicates his energy to help more people have the opportunity to connect with place, even if they are living in urban areas.

The questions Dylan’s work seeks to address are ones we want to answer through Village Agrarians too. How can we help more people be empowered to grow food and to have a relationship with land and place? How can food be produced in a sustainable and equitable way? Many of the projects Dylan is working on in Christchurch contain answers to these questions. 

Cultivate Christchurch, Dylan’s mainstay, provides paid internships for young people where they learn to grow food as well as develop job skills. He says one of the most powerful things about this work is when older interns have the opportunity to teach newer interns. He enjoys watching knowledge passed between people and he believes the internship is a valuable life experience, showing young people you do not need to have a job in a building, that working outside is valid too. The program is an entry point for some of the interns to go on to study Organic Horticulture at the BHU. Dylan mentioned that while many interns become very interested in sustainable food production through their internship at Cultivate, difficulty in accessing land and jobs in the field is a challenge that sadly prevents many from continuing. 

While the challenge new growers face in finding land is ongoing and something Village Agrarians hope to help address, fortunately, Dylan and some friends have accessed land through the BHU to steward a project called Crooked Roots. Crooked Roots is a farm focused on a mixture of really slow crops, for example Burdock and Celeriac, as well as dye plants like woad and Japanese Indigo, and seedlings trees. The friends all work on the project on their days off, and are open source with anything they are growing. The group is keen to share seeds and knowledge with anyone who is interested, and is glad to have the opportunity to grow what they want, focusing on crops that are too slow, or different, for many growers to cultivate. Excited to have dye plants that will be red, blue and yellow, Dylan looks forward to using these primary colors to make ink for woodblock printing! 

In addition to these two projects, Dylan is moving intentionally to help activate a new project in the Red Zone along the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor. It is a beautiful resource the city has, and the project aims to create a community engagement site with demonstration gardens so that people can connect with place, and be empowered to grow food themselves. 

We were so excited to learn about all of these projects that Dylan is involved with and the ways that they are creating the more sustainable, equitable and connected food system we are envisioning for tomorrow. If you want to connect with Dylan to learn more about his work, check him out on Instagram at @Crookedroots.nz and @Farmerdillo. You can also read about and support the work of Cultivate Christchurch on their website. 

Written by Naomi Morgan
Photos by Dylan Parker