Partnerships for the Goals with Emma Rowe

Emma Rowe is a Sustainability Specialist at FMG Insurance, accountable for thier sustainability strategy which covers environmental impact, social sustainability and governance. She is the perfect person to talk to about Partnerships for the Goals, as Becks and Emma have established a key partnership to make The Whole Story Podcast come to life. Emma grew up in the Fielding region, spending most of her days on her Gran’s farm, and went on to study politics, philosophy and politics at Victoria University. Despite now living in the city, Emma never lost her connection to agriculture, so when the opportunity to work for FMG came up she jumped at the chance.

“Why FMG? I mean, I don’t think many kids grow up dreaming about working for an insurance company and everyone in insurance would agree with that. So of course, that was never in my sights to work for a company like that. When the opportunity came to work in the Ag sector again, but also more on the business and corporate side for me was an opportunity to give back to the sector in a way that I could, you know, I mentioned that I wasn’t the most kind of practical on farm savvy person, but I understood systems and strategy and how to help improve the industry and improve the livelihoods through the governance side, I guess.

So with FMG,  I think what I quickly realised is that they were really hot on that corporate responsibility, give back style of doing business and it’s not something you really think about or learn about when you’re going to uni or high school around what businesses do, you probably learn OK, there’s a finance team, there’s a CEO and all the stuff, you don’t often hear about the teams, that their job is dedicated to bettering the business and bettering the clients and things like that, so that’s FMG 101. You know, it’s 118 year old mutual whose based on all profits go back into the business to either keep premiums fair and affordable, but so much of that goes back into the communities and we’ll talk a little bit about that later, but that community piece is so strong and I guess I just love the fact that I could feel like I was doing good through the business I was working at, really. and who would have thought it would be insurance.”

SDG # 17: Partnerships for the Goals

Goal 17 is all about strengthening the means of implementation and revitalise the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development. There is a proverb that says ‘if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together’ which encompasses a lot of what has been discussed throughout the podcast and blog series on the need and value of working together, in partnership, to address the challenges we face as a sector. For Emma, partnerships are a pivotal part of sustainability for multiple reasons.

“If we think about partnerships in the sense of people coming together to solve a challenge, when you remove that silo-ism and bring in a sense of unity, collective problem-solving, trust and resources, the likelihood of success increases and the challenge seems less complex and overwhelming. It’s like that old adage, a problem shared is a problem halved. And then you think of partnerships in the sense of community. So right now it definitely feels like we are losing our rural communities and also some of our provincial towns as well. We’re seeing businesses shut up their local branches. Obviously, forestry is having an impact as well. When you start to lose that community hub that has always been quite integral to rural New Zealand it does make it a bit tougher.”

Creating meaningful partnerships is important to FMG, as well as helping to ensure that rural communities continue to thrive and prosper. This is evident in all they do within rural communities at various scales.

“For FMG, as I say 118 years ago, it was built around these communities. And so, recognising the importance that they play in sustaining agriculture is why that notion of a strong, prosperous rural New Zealand is such an important part of a business success for us. And you can see it. You know, we haven’t shut offices in provincial New Zealand, we’ve built more, in fact. And our style of boots on the ground, working with our clients, we do that because there’s a real benefit to both sides. We sponsor and attend about 800 events every year. They range from the big ones, like FMG Young Farmer of the Year, your Melanoma New Zealand, classics like Golden Shears, Horse of the Year, Young Hort, goes right down to ripper rugby, lamb and calf day and then of course, Farm Strong so FMG’s, founding member of this incredible programme, and it’s actually mostly FMG employees who run that programme day-to-day. I have the privilege of being part of that team.

You’ve also got partnerships for building future leaders and solutions. And we’ve got a long standing partnership with Kellogg’s, Nuffield. We work closely with Lincoln, Massey and Canterbury University through our Ag scholarships, Agri Women’s Development Trust. These partnerships all make sense because they just build this continuous sense of community and success. There’s also strategic partnerships and I guess for us that’s Federated Farmers, Farmlands, rural Co, Irrigation New Zealand, and that comes from that notion of you can’t be an expert at everything, and it makes much better sense to leverage your expertise, and as I said before, bring in that collective thinking. Even the insurance industry, despite being competitors, we actually try and build a bridge of partnership through the Insurance Council of New Zealand. And so we work together with the overall goal to destroy and strengthen the insurance industry as a whole.”

What sustainability means to Emma and her most aligned SDG

When it comes to sustainability, Emma is focused on it from a holistic lens and loves the four P’s approach of people, planet, profit and purpose. She also resonates with sustainability being the need for long term thinking.

“Trying to balance the needs of today without masking or avoiding the larger issues at hand. Otherwise you just end up back in the same place in the future. I also like to think of sustainability as that old adage of quality over quantity. You know, it’s quality of friends, not quantity of friends. Quality of food, not quantity of food, quality clothes, quality furniture, appliances. It’s that idea that is better to pay more or wait longer or sacrifice a bit more in the short-term knowing that you’ll get a better deal in the long term. Because we have so much choice, more choice than ever on what we want to buy and we can get it now, we can get it cheap but little thought about where it’s all actually come from who’s made it, what’s it made from and what really gripes me is that we often can’t fix anything. You know, my toaster broke. And I couldn’t do anything but buy another one and when it came to disposing it, there was not really much that I could do, so the system does feel a little bit rigged, you know, to just buy it again and I guess that quantity of profits outstrips that quality part. Saying that though, I think more consumers are really starting to change their view on that and starting to be a bit more enlightened about our spending habits, shall we say.”

SDG # 8, decent work and economic growth, is what aligns most personally with Emma, and the reason why is two-fold.

“Firstly, I fundamentally believe that you can use business to do good and that profit maximising shouldn’t be considered the arc of success in business and profit maximising is different to profit making. Secondly, the better you treat your people or employees, the better they treat your business. The more they feel valued, the more value they’ll give back. Decent work leads to decent livelihoods, which leads to decent health, decent wealth and then that continues in a really positive, sustainable cycle in large businesses can contribute and own most of this process.”

Challenge and opportunity regarding sustainability in the Ag sector

Emma’s response to being asked what the biggest challenge facing the ag sector regarding sustainability is has two parts. Firstly, she indicated the importance of acknowledging the immediate challenges people are facing on farm right now such as increasing farm inputs costs, worker shortage, fast moving legislation, and the increase in the intensity and frequency of major weather events. Secondly, she identified the major challenge of lack of certainty which is leading to a lack of trust across the sector.

“So He Waka Eke Noa and the Primary Industry Partnership is a great example of industry partners coming together to forge a fair and considered plan forward. It certainly took a few rounds to get there and there’s still work to do. It feels like we’re heading in a good direction. It’s still relatively early in the piece, so there’s still uncertainty and lack of information out there and what makes it worse, and this is regardless of which side of the political horseshoe that you sit on, is sustainability, particularly climate change, it’s just been used as an election tool or for advocacy in lobby groups on either side of the coin to further their own agendas or gain popularity among their circles by blaming each other or spitting out contradicting science and information. And in this constant bickering and bargaining, it’s not a robust conversation. It’s actually getting really hostile. And so, then we’re expecting farmers and growers and business owners to make long term decisions with very little certainty and little information. You can’t do that as a business and no wonder confidence is at an all time low.”

Despite this, there are many dedicated and optimistic people who are working on finding solutions and forging a path forward, says Emma, and she talks to these sorts of people everyday.

“I like how Mike Casey from episode 8 talked about the people in the middle, the ones kind of ignoring the politics and the agendas, and they just want to find a solution that fits both sides. He said these are the ones that are going to figure it all out. I have to agree. I could talk for hours about the innovation, precision farming science, technology, mentoring, empathetic leadership that’s going on in the sector. I mean a lot of examples in this TWS podcast series and we’ve profiled countless FMG clients and their success stories. I was out at Dairy Trust Taranaki last week, highly recommend looking at what they’re doing, particularly if you’re in the dairy sector. Incredible work and research and it’s all designed to be shared across the industry and it’s being designed by people who are really aware of all of the challenges that everyone’s facing, so they’re not looking to design solutions that would only fit large scale farmers or people with lots of resources. They really know what they’re doing and they live and breathe this stuff. And this is another reason why partnerships are so key, because not everyone has the resources to suddenly change things or trial a new tech or plant a new crop. It’s a hard ask to rest your livelihood on trying something new, and so it’s good to see large organisations partnering with their suppliers or providing incentives and opportunities to try new things.”

Listen to Emma’s podcast episode here: