Julia Jones’ LinkedIn tagline describes her best – ‘inspiring, driving change and keeping it real’. At the time of recording Julia was the Head of Analytics at NZX, where she has arrived after spending almost 15 years in the rural banking sector before moving to KPMG. Julia describes herself as having grown up in the school of hard knocks, which has given her courage because you either break and fall apart, or you get hard and you just get on with shit. Her life story and the learnings from it have largely been from having great courage to take leaps of faith and just make things work. She has a great eye for opportunity and is constantly pursuing growing her knowledge and sharing her learnings with those around her.
When it comes to what sustainbility means to Julia, she defines it as the ‘holistic continuation of survival’.
“So that would mean financial. That means planet. That means people, that means animals and the holistic, I mean, as in our ability as human race or business to sustain into the future. So, I don’t necessarily go straight to an environmental type of thing because I think obviously environmental is really important but sustainability to me means to cross it into financial as well as environmental, it can’t just be environmental, cause bills need to get paid, things need to get done. We need to have businesses roll, but we also need to make sure that we protect our beautiful planet that is not an infinite source of resource.”
SDG #9: Industry, innovation and infrastructure
SDG 9 is focused around building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and fostering innovation. It’s a really big and interesting goal. Julia views New Zealand agriculture as quite progressed in this space. Sure, New Zealand has terrible roads, but that isn’t in the control of our farmers and growers. However, there are still opportunities for growth.
“I think the areas that we probably might be missing, and again this is not in the control of our farmers, is our infrastructure around democratising, getting our growers closer to our consumer. So, if you were a farmer, and I’m not saying that this works because I’ve gone through this with lots of people around their own brands, but if you wanted to have your own brand, it’s really difficult because if you in particular with meat is if you want to have that processed, you have to do that at a time that is convenient to the processor, and then that’s not always made easy. So, it might not work for your customer, so you don’t have a lot of control because we don’t have mobile abattoirs, we can’t do home kill type stuff and legally sell it. I’m not criticizing any of the meat companies, don’t want them on my back either. If we looked at that sustainable goal, the one thing that I think is missing is the infrastructure capability that empowers a farmer to get their product into, even a local market, easily.”
“My perspective of that goal was very much about making, giving everyone a fair go at having an opportunity, and I genuinely believe that’s true in New Zealand. As I’ve said, I’m quite hopeless with actual practical farming. I’ve never sat with a farmer who hasn’t been prepared to share their incredible knowledge that they may have got through generations. So, I think in that sense, we’ve actually got a really great community and that’s what we do exceptionally well is that we do actually share our knowledge. If the neighbour was having trouble and came to you and asked for help, you’re gonna help them. It must be very difficult in some of those third world countries when you’re trying to develop a farming standard where you’re trying to develop based off your environment and you don’t necessarily have the knowledge or support there. People can criticise the industry bodies as much as they like, but man, what they have done for people is exceptional: support, the knowledge that they’ve shared and provided to start up people, people who may just be changing and don’t understand that been in the sector for a long time. So, I think we’re very fortunate and my perspective is we’re very progressed in this space.”
The innovation space is something that is very dear to Julia, and one that she thinks we are very good at, but that it is also very scary. Fear is a major undertone at the moment, which Julia says is stifling our ability to innovate but also to celebrate others achievements and approaches.
“So, I think we become very threatened and I and again not criticising anyone, I think at the moment there’s just so much fear of losing relevance or losing everything we have, and all this this fear is just making us all a bit mad really at the moment or angry. But I think the reality of it is, you know, when someone tries something new, this is a New Zealand thing not an Ag thing by the way, is when someone tries something new, we love to beat them up when they fail. And then we really love to beat them up when they succeed. And I think what we do is we make it very difficult for people to innovate and grow because we see failure as a failure. We don’t see failure as someone trying something and then learning from it and getting better at it.
Just because I want to call myself regenerative and I might live next door to you doesn’t mean that I’m criticising you. And I think we’re starting to take things really personally if someone wants to do something different to the way we do it. So instead of going that’s awesome Barry, you’re gonna grow pineapples. You grow your pineapples. That’s brilliant. People tend to go well. He’s grown pineapples because he thinks it dairy farming is bad, or he thinks sheep and beef is bad, instead of just thinking there’s actually plenty of space for all of us to do things a little bit differently. We have to have the same goals around looking after the planet and financially being able to support ourselves.”
“I think ultimately innovation gets stifled by fear and people over personalizing it instead of encouraging people to be different, encouraging growth, it takes a lot of courage.”
Julia also touches on the need for less judgement and less punishment. There’s a big spectrum out there from entrepreneurs who love to take big risks to learn and grow, and we need to give them the space to do that, says Julia, but at the same time, those who don’t innovate and those who are more into getting on with it are also important and we shouldn’t beat them up for not being innovative enough for us. “If we almost left the highly innovative people to be highly innovative and get on with it, and then had those really good people that work behind them that get on with stuff and execute business well, then we’d actually have a really good combination.” What Julia sees as important in the innovation space is more a culture of innovation, rather than a particular innovation itself, and asking the questions like what did they learn? What can we learn from it? And how can we move forward? Reframing from a mindset of fear and othering to one of being inquisitive and open to learning from others will really help with that culture of innovation within our sector.
When it comes to the SDG that resonates the most to Julia, for her it is around resilient infrastructure that is touched on under Goal 9.
“The keyword is resilience in the sense that we’ve got to set things up with the future in mind, and I think we tend to solve today’s problem which creates tomorrow’s problem instead of actually thinking about what infrastructure do we need next, what’s gonna support people and also human resilience, how do we help people operate better? Do we hand out too much and not hand up?”
“I think we get more resilience from having this sense of, this is gonna sound really on the card, potentially, or terrible but I think sometimes when you know no one else coming to save you and your it you actually become a little bit more functional and focused. I think when you think that someone else will come and do it or assume that someone else has a solution, you don’t get on with it and I think resilience is the key.
The thing that really resonates with me in that first part of the SDG 9 is really that resilience across infrastructure – that’s creating solutions for the future, that are future proof, and then also the other side of it is ensuring that humans are resilient enough, cause resilience is not about being protected from bad things happening. Resilience is about actually learning how to cope with bad things that happen. That’s the difference. Bad things will happen. We cannot in any way control that in many ways, but we can control how we respond to it, which is a cheesy cliche, but a true one. And I think that resilience is a muscle, and you’ve just gotta keep working on it. Being overly protected is not going to help you.”
Julia’s view on the biggest challenge facing the NZ Ag sector regarding sustainability
If Julia had to put our biggest challenge down to one thing, she would say it is our mindset. She emphasises that our mindset has gone to a place of panic and hopelessness that is spreading like wildfire, instead of us actually stopping and supporting people to understand what we can do today. As Julia acknowledges, it is unfortunately the quiet ones that are just getting on with it, digesting what’s happening and controlling what they can, in order to keep moving with the times.
For Julia, we have mistaken criticizing with critically analyzing, so there’s very little critical analysis around what we might to need to do to target the changes required of us. We need to evolve and adapt, and that requires us to be in a mindset where that is possible. Similarly to Keri Johnston in Episode 7, Julia touches on the fact that we need to be looking at what we can gain, rather than focusing on what we may lose. There is so much room for opportunity, growth and great gains, but the mindset and perspective is needed in order to be able to make the most of it.
And as you said before how do we take control of what we can control? So firstly, do we even understand what we can control in our immediate circle of influence? Do we actually understand on our farm the three or four things, do we actually measure it? Do we even know what we need to change? You know, I think sometimes we go on Facebook or we go on Twitter and we get we hyped up… We keep focusing on what we’ll lose rather than what we might gain. We have a loss mentality instead of a gaining mentality. We are not stopping and thinking and breathing and going what is actually happening? What do I understand?”
Are we actually doing the right thing by our neighbour by frightening them? And when you are frightening people and you’re making people feel like they are hopeless, that is not leadership, and I think that’s the big thing that we need for sustainability is to think about the great things that we’re gonna gain and we have to be really real about this, whether you believe it was, you know hairspray or the man or just general cycles, climate change is real. Things are evolving and we are going to have to adapt so we can continue to farm. That’s whether we like it or not. That’s just a given. So how do we actually look at that and how do we take opportunity within that and how do we think about what we will gain from some of our change.”
“There is uncertainty. It’s going to continue to get more uncertain just because of the nature of the world and the best way to anchor yourself is to think about those things that you can control and the things that you can do and stop focusing on what you will lose and think about what we can gain as a sector together.”
“I’m not saying that you should not push back and I’m not saying you shouldn’t question things, but question rather than constantly fight, it worries me. You know, at the moment I just see my parents in the sector and maybe that makes it a bit personal for me, but there’s people fighting and fighting and fighting inevitable change and they will have no energy left when they realise it’s inevitable and wanna change and you know, and this whole thing about there’ll be no farming, there’s gonna be farming. People will farm. People want to continue to farm. There will be farming, there will be food. But again, it comes down to mindset. We actually have choices, and we can choose to, and again I’m not saying we aren’t allowed to fight back, and I’m not saying that we are allowed to push and ask and question things but God critically analyse, for God’s sake, stop criticizing. You know, what does this actually mean to me? What does this mean to the business? What will we need to change? Because a lot of people probably find there’s not a massive amount that they need to change, and some will find that there is. And so how do we support those that find that there is a lot for them to change? How do we wrap as much around them as we can, so they know what to change and they feel supported in that process.”
When it comes to practical tips on sustainability, Julia emphasises reflection.
- Think about one or two things you could do for sustainability that you could do really really well
- Actually stop and think about all the great things you already do. Write them on a list, because you’ll probably feel really good about yourself when you see that there’s 15 things you already do for sustainability.
Take the time to appreciate yourself, what you’ve done and achieved, and tell someone about what you’ve achieved. Tell consumers or the public what you’re up to, because they love to hear it and they won’t come digging for the information themselves. Don’t underestimate how interesting you are and how much people want to hear about the cool things happening on farm.
Listen to Julia’s podcast episode here: