water
Most Aucklanders assume their water comes from clean bush catchments. About 15 percent comes from the Waikato River — 400 kilometres through dairy farms, geothermal country, and industrial towns. Here's what that means.
Little Farms
A former solicitor, a no-dig garden, and eleven Wairarapa farms working together. Little Farms just aired on Country Calendar — here's everything you need to know.
glyphosate
April 2026 testing found glyphosate in six of eight supermarket breads — highest in the wholegrain and seed-heavy loaves many of us choose for health. But the real story is what those everyday exposures may be doing to your gut bacteria.
organic certification
New Zealand exports its premium food to the world and imports cheaper alternatives to fill the gap. Underneath that paradox sit several interconnected debates — the GE Technology Bill, glyphosate residues, imported food standards, and what organic certification can and can't protect.
food system infrastructure
When the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed in March, it didn't just disrupt oil. A third of the world's fertiliser trade moved through that channel. NZ farming is feeling it.
New Zealand food system
It started with one exceptional strawberry. Three months later: fragile processing capacity, hidden supply chains, and quiet resilience in NZ's food system.
organic growing
There are now several places in New Zealand where you can learn how organic food actually works. Not just which label to choose, but the underlying practice — soil health, seed saving, what it takes to run a small market garden.
Organic Food NZ
I started by turning over a butter packet. I ended up discovering a patchwork of farms, collectives, butcheries, and stores quietly trying to solve one of organic food's most stubborn problems — how do you get good food from a small farm to the people who actually want it?
Huckleberry Farms
For thirty years, Huckleberry Farms was the beating heart of organic food retail in Auckland. From a single Greenlane store in 1994 to twelve locations across the North Island, it built something the supermarket duopoly could never replicate. In June 2024, it was gone.
New Zealand food system
New Zealanders assume the frozen vegetables in the supermarket are still mostly local and trustworthy. But as local processing disappears, that choice is quietly being made for us.
New Zealand food system
Frozen vegetable processing is shrinking in New Zealand because the whole chain is under margin pressure at once. Growers are squeezed, processors are squeezed, households are squeezed, and supermarkets still hold enormous power. Imports do not solve that. They simply mask the damage.
New Zealand food system
McCain’s Hastings closure and Wattie’s frozen vegetable retreat put at risk local processing capacity tied to roughly 86,000 tonnes of vegetables a year, enough for all five daily vegetable servings for around 589,000 people.
