Articles

The industry is in desperate need of a strong Visionary leader who is empathic to everyone's needs and can bring us all along as one on the journey.

The Civil War needs to stop.

NZBeekeepers needs to stop verbally beating on APInz.

AFB PMP needs to stop verbally beating on Beekeepers.

Personal agendas need to be put aside, blinkers need to be ripped off, and everyone needs to be wide eye to the opportunity and the battle that’s smouldering over the horizon outside of our Smug hermit kingdom (as a former PM rightly put it).

It's not about the size of everyone's slice of the pie; it's about growing the size of the pie itself so everyone can get a bigger piece.

Unfortunately, that means one thing only, growing our contribution to national GPD through export earnings.

NZ honey is unique!! Fulfilling a luxury niche market of only 1% by honey volume, we only need to grow market share another 1% to double export value.

We just need to be smart about how we do it—i.e., stop putting it in the spreads section of the supermarket.

Arguing about the value of pollination is a moot point. Pollination is a domestic cost of production worth only $40M to apiculture tops.

We can’t claim the value of other industries as our own. Accounting has a term for this; it is called double dipping. Carbon credits will go to the farmer whose soil has sequestered it. Clover pollination is only an alternative cost to Nitrogen use at best.

When mind mapping out the needs of the industry, what work needs to be done and where funding needs to go, complex is putting it lightly. If we try to nut out all the details first it will take forever.

APInz is probably right to focus on the industry structure and funding model first.

If we take the approach of NZ wine growers of two levies, individually controlled and directed at the issues on either side of the industry. No one needs to miss out.

We should probably also take the opportunity to not paint ourselves into a corner while we are at it by removing specific names from working groups.

For example, Manuka from the Manuka appellation society, as once the work is complete for Manuka, the learnings and knowledge can be applied to the next honey ready to go, AFB PMP to Honeybee PMP, etc.