Enhancing Farm Assurance – A White Paper

Assurance systems are one of the cornerstones of the New Zealand economy and agribusinesses – ensuring compliance with regulations, enabling international trade, ensuring safety of products and firms’ operations, animal welfare, water quality, biodiversity, and many other aspects of farm management.

In 2016 assurance systems facilitated over 60% of NZ exports at a value of $27.6 billion. At each step across food value chains, there are regional, national, and international standards and regulations that must be complied with.

This white paper focuses on how farms and the general public view the current status of assurance practice, and aims to determine how farm assurance can be enhanced to maintain and improve its social licence to operate.

To fulfil its aim, the white paper specifically addresses the critical areas of technological development, public awareness and demand for social and environmental accountability; potential and value of incorporating Māori world perspectives, insights and cultural attributes; linkages to normative references and standards and alignment with international standards; the delivery of assurance (assurance process).

The paper interlinks findings with insights from other conformity assessment systems; therefore, the findings are in part transferable across the entire conformity assessment industry.