Agricultural Economics and Food Policy in New Zealand: An Uneasy But Successful Collaboration Between Government and Farmers

The book analyses agricultural economics and food policy in New Zealand, where farming produce has been by far the main export commodity. Farming exports’ importance, together with the need to diversify exports away from a former colonial relationship with the UK, makes liberalising agricultural trade a major concern for New Zealand. Farmers, themselves, have influenced, significantly, policy development and implementation through their organisation, Federated Farmers. After World War II farmers at first encouraged Government financial support for farming and by the 1980s farming was highly subsidised. Farmers recognised in the 1980s that New Zealand’s economic problems demanded reduced Government intervention and accepted ending farming subsidies. New Zealand then encouraged, globally, ’farming without subsidies’. New Zealand projected an image of environmental cleanliness and greenness in support of its exporting but into the 21^st century wrestled to maintain that image because farming impacted on water quality and climate change emissions.

David Hall completed a career in space science and retired from his post as Director of Science at the British National Space Centre before he studied Humanities and History at the Open University, UK, graduating in 2010. He moved to New Zealand in 2011 and completed a PhD at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand in 2016. An adaptation of his dissertation was published by Palgrave in 2017, entitled Emerging from an Entrenched Colonial Economy: New Zealand Primary Production, Britain and EEC, 1945-1975. At Victoria University he tutored courses on North American history and Modern European history. His forthcoming book, New Zealand’s Invisible Women, is on the role of farm wives in New Zealand.