Andrew Morrison is super passionate about rural communities and the contribution that these communities make through the agricultural sector to New Zealand’s economy. Born and raised in Southland, Andrew continues to farm there now with his wife on a sheep and beef farm. Andrew is also passionate about creating impact off farm and at the time of recording was the chairman of Beef and Lamb New Zealand. He displays strong leadership for the agricultural sector, placing focus on the people working within it, navigating complex and fast-paced challenges, and mentoring the next generation of leaders coming through.
Many opportunities have came knocking over the years for Andrew, but one recurring theme was present in his earlier days of saying no. However, he soon learnt that when opportunities come knocking, it’s worth grasping them with two hands and giving them a go.
“So when, you know, get asked to manage the farm I said no, then in 2011 Ballance election to be a Director, got rung up to ask to put my name forward and I said no because we were going to quite a difficult succession plan at the time, but a guy convinced me to put my name forward and yeah, it was the best thing I’ve ever done and I think the lesson I learned how to there is if the door opens, you know, walk through it and see where it takes you. So yeah it was a good lesson to learn.”
Andrew credits a key part of his journey to where he is today to the learnings he gained when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2002, something which he says he was blessed to get.
“Got testicular cancer and that was a great journey because what it taught me then is that life is not all about Andrew Morrison. Because Andrew Morrison may not have even been here, but I had to think about my family and I had to think about my community. So it, you know, it was a great lesson that it’s not all about me.”
From then on, Andrew has been involved in many roles which result in industry good. He has sat on the Board of Overseer Management Limited, a Director on the Board of Balance Agrinutrients, and then became Chairman of Beef and Lamb New Zealand.
“Look, everyone said holy crap, you’ve picked a very contentious time to be in an industry body organisation and you, yeah, but nobody can ever foresee things coming and the reality is go back to that value set of why we’re doing stuff. It’s a very important time to get some of these settings right, so loving the challenges and loving the board and the management working together to work out how we’re going to do this.”
An analogy his younger brother talks about is something that comes to Andrew’s mind when reflecting on the challenge of being an industry body representative during a time of lots of change and pressure on the agricultural sector.
“It’s only when a ship hits a storm that you see the calibre of your crew’. And it’s really easy to be all pretty supportive and everything’s trucking along nice when you’re going through the doldrums or the mild times, it’s when you hit the storms that you’ve really gotta step up and working out what you’re actually doing there and what do you need to get through the other side of that storm.”
What sustainability means for Andrew
When it comes to sustainability, Andrew acknowledges everybody has a different view on things, but for him the core of sustainability actually starts with people and mindset.
“If the people have the right mindset and want to walk through that door like you described, or the actions to deliver on whatever given challenge you’re given on any given day, be it water quality, be it biodiversity, be it climate. If we understand that that’s actually important to the sustainability or the ongoing, you know feeding and clothing of our race, well, it becomes to just almost like well why wouldn’t we do this? But as I say, I sort of have a firm belief in my own head that it sort of starts with people and enabling people to make their own decisions to answer the given questions, I suppose.”
Andrew walks the talk in this area too as he is passionate about helping others step into leadership and understand and continue to grow their own capabilities. His philosophy towards this can be capture in another quote that his younger brother gave him:
“You’re not a leader until you’ve grown a leader who’s grown a leader”.
“And so, I spend a lot of time mentoring and talking to young emerging leaders cause that’s actually what really floats my boat. I’m looking for succession planning and I’m looking for really capable people to move through the sector and you know seriously, we’ve got some people that are far more capable than us when we entered the beginning of our journeys.”
SDG # 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
This goal is related to promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. Targets under this goal relate to various areas such as:
- Significantly reducing violence and death rates everywhere
- Ending abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against children
- Promoting the rule of law at national and international levels, ensuring equal access to justice for all
- Developing effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels
- Ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision making at all levels
When it comes to Beef and Lamb, the work around strong institutions is something that Andrew sees as relating to the work that Beef and Lamb are doing.
“On #16.6 under that, is develop effective and accountable transparent institutions at all levels. You know, and it’s hard, this is what Beef+Lamb is. The commodity levy construct that came out of the economic reform of the 80’s is a great construct of transparency, accountability in delivering for sector. So you know that strong institutions, you know we can talk about this on so many levels. We can talk about the work that Beef+Lamb does say in its trade access or market access space and supporting World Trade Organisation strong institutional delivering. We can talk about the disciplines around the He Waka stuff, around working with government and working with other organisations and running good process to try and deliver an outcome that’s needed. We can talk about Beef+Lamb itself and we run the 6-year commodity referendum cycles and the director elections annually. I’m a big fan of building robust systems. They give people confidence in process because then if you can build all the systems then you can plug in the pieces that are needed when facing any individual challenge. I guess that’s where my mind went to with this one.”
One of the targets underneath the goal is to ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision making at all levels, which is a current challenge in the agricultural sector when it comes to changes that are happening in the regulatory space.
“Yeah well let’s be honest, that’s been the biggest challenge of this. The speed and pace of regulatory chain. A bunch of our farmers quite rightly say, look, I haven’t had the ability to participate in their decision-making cause stuff has just been bombarded at us. Even the He Waka process, as much as we’ve got the 11 industry partners and two government partners and Cam spoke of us too on his podcast, in a perfect world we would have had our farmers more involved on the journey but it’s been such tight time frames and such a big process that that is the one area we’ve let ourselves down badly. And I’ll wear that one on the chin as an organisation because you know the perfect world we would have worked far closer with individual farming groups to take them on the journey with us.”
Increasing connections between industry groups and working together in the face of challenges is one of the key messages that Beef and Lamb was getting from farmers, and the He Waka Eke Noa partnership was an active process where this occurred.
“That, when faced with a major challenge like this, let’s try and do it together so that we aren’t throwing any of our mates under the bus, any of our sector mates, and then we get the best outcome for all of us and in doing that it creates its own challenges of what I described previously, in having time to engage with the farming community. But hand on heart on the maturity of the sector and we are all trying to work together has been great. If we get to do this again, which we want to do in the nutrient, water quality space, the lessons that Cam talked about on engaging with their farming community, we’re just gonna have to have more time to do that.”
We are a trading nation, and Andrew is also quick to point out the good things that have been going on in ensuring the sustainability of trade partnerships through Free Trade Agreements. While there is plenty going on that is frustrating for the industry, the Government has also ratified some trade deals that are important for the future of the sector going forward, and Andrew highlights the importance of also highlighting the good things that the Government is doing for the sector.
“So you know the WTO and the trade based systems are really, really important ongoing for the success of New Zealand agriculture. And just need to sort of stress that great farming community because you know there’s a bit of a fixation on internal advocacy at the moment in New Zealand space around government speed, pace of change, around climate change, biodiversity, water quality. But government has done some good work in the space of free trade agreements and market excess. We are highly supportive of that by the time delivering on that for New Zealand farming.”
“Yeah well right now we only have access of 454 tonnes of high quality beef into the UK market. When we get this trade deal ratified, you know we got 12,000 tonnes on day one climbing to free access after 15 years, no tariffs, I mean that’s massively significant and enables a bunch of their processors to make some different decisions around where they put their product. So it’s pretty cool story.”
Challenge and opportunity regarding sustainability in the agricultural sector
For Andrew, the biggest challenge we face in the agricultural sector regarding sustainability comes down to mindset. He is quick to mention that there is no sector in New Zealand that has demonstrated the productivity gains, since the economic reform of the 80’s, than that of the agricultural sector. Nobody can match the productivity gains and how well we have reprovisionised. To Andrew, that shows that the sector is one that actually embraces challenges, works out what do, cracks on and does it.
“We’re 40 years on from that now, but the challenge now we are having an environmental reset at the moment and there’s a bunch of these fears of change are starting to emerge again.
As opposed to deliberating, saying, OK, I’m hearing the consumer in New Zealand society has got some concerns and what are we gonna do about that and how are we gonna give them the confidence that we are listening and we’re addressing them. So that’s first is the confidence of listening to the challenges and the second part is well, what are we gonna do about it?
Look, water quality issues and intensive provinces in New Zealand is a real issue and has to be addressed. Climate change, you know there’s bookends of oh, I don’t think this is anything at all, to the other bookend of the world’s gonna end tomorrow. There’s enough science that we should be taking this quite seriously. And we should work out what our role in that is, so let’s listen to the science and let’s work out what we can do around that.
The biggest challenge is mindset. My solution for climate change actually links with my solution for riparian management. Also, the links in with my shade and shelter for animals, and it also links with my indigenous biodiversity, and it also links with my people strategy of creating great places to work. So, if we can sort a link those solutions together in a mindset, I don’t find this journey as scary as it should be.”
When it comes to shifting mindsets, Andrew stresses the importance of acknowledging what we have already done by those around us, such as Government and consumers.
“Well, I think what that farming community wants to hear and would love to hear Government say look I acknowledge all the stuff that you guys have done. You guys are doing a great job. You are the best farmers but that doesn’t give you a licence to carry on not addressing the issues. But I think you know what the farming community is hearing is you guys are all eco-villains or you’re eco-terrorists and I’m gonna have to tell you what to do. I don’t think that’s exactly what Government’s saying, but I think we are cross messaging what we’re trying to achieve here.
Let’s pretend we could all just spend some time getting together as Government and farming community and acknowledging the great stuff and acknowledging we are well on the journey and acknowledging a bunch of the settings getting them right like recognition of sequestration. You know, 2.8 million hectares of indigenous biodiversity on our farms. Let’s acknowledge what the farming communities done and doing. And I think that would get us halfway on the journey of oh yeah thanks for at least acknowledging that. And let’s crack on and do the next bit, because now I know we can collectively work together and get the settings right. Now that’s what we’re trying to do with the farming leaders and the constructs of He Waka, you know, and the work doing the water, quality space is acknowledge what’s going on on farm and get the policy settings right that acknowledging it and actually enable the change.”
Whenever Andrew has a really frustrating day, he goes out on farm and pounds a post or plants a tree, providing an active way to chip away at tasks on farm in bite-sized pieces. What he’s found is that if he does it in bite-sized pieces then it doesn’t become as scary. This is a great tangible way to work on sustainability initiatives on farm, and over time he’s fenced off gullies and planted them with trees. It doesn’t need to be done all at once, but just chipping away over time. Another tip Andrew mentions is coming back to, and reconnecting with, your why.
Why did you start farming? Go back to your why and bring that enjoyment back.
Listen to Andrew’s podcast episode here: