Food System
Trust in news, government and supermarkets has taken a beating since 2020, and the packet won't tell you what's in it either. Trust didn't vanish; it shrank to people we can see. That's the grower at the stall, the farm gate, and the back garden.
food prices
A reader asked how much of the $10 he pays for a dozen eggs reaches the farmer and how much the supermarket clips. Nobody in the article was asked. Three economists explained record food prices, and every cause they named sat somewhere no New Zealander can reach.
organic
Why do people choose organic food? Sprays, GM feed, soil biology, animal welfare, and the trust underneath it all. An honest run through every reason people pay more, including the weak ones that don't survive the evidence, and what the premium over free range actually buys you in New Zealand.
beef
When Hickory Bay Farm's beef boxes sold out after a Seven Sharp story, I started pulling threads. They led to a Rothschild heir's 2002 organic promise, a family who quietly made it real, and the strange reason certified organic beef can't call itself organic.
Watchlist
A friend sent a list of thirty-odd food documentaries. I watched my way through and sorted the ones worth your time — plus where to find them free from New Zealand.
food security
In 2015 NZ committed to building resilient food systems and protecting domestic food production. Four years from that deadline, food insecurity is at a ten-year high, our processing infrastructure is collapsing, and cheap imports are filling the gap — for now.
chicken
Standing in the chicken aisle: barn-raised, free-range, organic — three different lives, three different prices, same blue badge. What does SPCA Certified actually certify, how does it compare internationally, and why does the SPCA endorse a higher standard it doesn't require?
meat
New Zealand has five times as many sheep as people, and sells its lamb to the world. So I assumed organic lamb would be easy to find here. It wasn't. Here's what I found when I went looking — and the missing piece that explains it.
Organic Food
In 1985, a British prince converted his farm to organic. People called him a complete idiot. Forty years later, he's the King — and the farm is still going.
eggs
A friend told me she buys Otaika Valley free range eggs because she liked the pohutukawa flower on the label. She didn't know who owned the brand. Neither did I, in any real detail. So I went looking.
chicken
A chicken raised for meat passes through a sequence of inputs and processes between hatching and packaging. Coccidiostats in feed. A chlorine bath at slaughter. Chlorinated water absorbed into the meat and sold by weight. Here's what I found when I mapped the whole journey.
chicken
New Zealanders eat 40 kilos of chicken a year. Every supermarket bird has spent its life on Argentine GM soy sprayed with glyphosate, which the WHO calls a probable carcinogen. Bayer has paid US$11bn settling cancer cases while insisting the chemical is safe. Here's what's actually in your chicken.
