Industry Roundtable Two – Light on the Road?

There was greater attendance for the second in a series of industry roundtable meetings hosted by New Zealand Beekeeping Inc (NZBI) on May 1, but was there greater progress made? Biosecurity was a hot topic, as was the potential formation of a new committee to represent existing beekeeping groups at a national level, with a diverse selection of beekeepers from up and down the country weighing in.

  “We are left with a credible idea that needs to be tested out,” was meeting facilitator Ian Fletcher’s summarisation after three and a half hours of conversation between beekeepers and wider industry personal, including Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) senior staff for periods.

Among those in the room and around the table at the NZBI-organised meeting on May 1 at the Wellington Club were, from left, Karen Adair (MPI), facilitator Ian Fletcher, Niha Long (AFB PMP national manager), Jamie McRae, Lawrie Duncan, Allan Richards and Cameron Martin.

Those staff, MPI deputy director-general Karen Adair and director of readiness and response John Walsh, were joined at the Wellington Club by Fletcher and nine others, plus 16 participants on video-meeting platform Zoom. All 28 involved in the meeting were invited to contribute, and all did to varying levels as ideas bounced back and forward while winds battered the capital city outside.

With Walsh only in attendance for about an hour, biosecurity was a major focus during that time. Outside of that it was the need for a group to represent beekeepers’ varied needs – including on issues of biosecurity and incursion response – taking centre stage.

A National Committee?

The “credible idea” that came from the meeting was the potential to form a national-level committee which takes its membership from nominations from existing beekeeping groups, most of which are already being run at a regional level. NZBI president Jane Lorimer – who is also a life member and former president of the National Beekeepers Association, which merged into Apiculture New Zealand (ApiNZ) in 2016 – suggested the model to the meeting.

“The central coordinating committee then deals with MPI, Ministers and any other government agencies we need to deal with. On the other hand, the coordinating committee will also deal with Horticulture New Zealand and other primary industry groups, such as on pollination,” Lorimer explained her thinking.

“We can expand it from there, but the idea is to get the current groups together, and to encourage more to form to then feed into a central committee. Having a matrix of skillsets of people amongst everyone for specific issues where they might have the right skills to do so will share the workload for everybody.

“It is fairly simple and we would need to work out a mechanism for funding that central committee … this may be a means to work together, to build trust and the necessary bridges with the other groups which we need to and move forward.”

One of those bridges would surely be with ApiNZ should they survive current struggles with financial sustainability. ApiNZ deputy chair Tony Wright was a part of the roundtable meeting, a departure from the first such meeting on April 10, which the fellow industry-good group leadership declined to attend.

“It might be the right mechanism for some issues, and not others. Until you try it out, you don’t really know,” Wright said via Zoom.

“If it is an issue that requires collective funding for example, is it the right mechanism to bring together funding? Or is it just a way of getting your voices heard up and down the channel to whoever the other parties are?

“I have an open mind. I could see that it would work, but I would be interested to trial it out on some real issues.”

A shortcoming of such a model could be its inability to offer a “professional” face for the industry in dealings with other stakeholder groups, John Mackay, a leader at ApiNZ’s Tairawhiti Hub, pointed out.

“This is a professional industry selling hundreds of millions of dollars of product overseas. It needs a professional representation,” Mackay said.

“They need to be seen to be operating at a professional level by outside organisations, such as MPI, the AFB Management Board, and other primary industries that are professionally led … it could be an opportunity to bring in the next generation, the younger people.”

Some debate around how best to include hobbyist beekeepers in the process took place, with Bay of Plenty beekeeper Jody Mitchell eventually contributing that a hobbyist group could be formed to sit alongside the various regional groups which feed into the national committee.

“We are into designing a structure, without being clear on what it is there to do,” Wright reminded the meeting.

“Form must follow function,” Fletcher reinforced.

“We can’t be all things to all people,” contributed Southland beekeeper Grant Hayes.

“We need to focus on the main things we want to cover and we can’t cover everything.”

Biosecurity

At the top of that list is likely biosecurity – and certainly is in the mind of NZBI executive member and Arataki Honey director Russell Berry who on several occasions made clear the need for fast elimination of any pest incursions before they spread.

In all, just short of 30 people from around apiculture contributed to the roundtable meeting on May 1, with most entering the room in Wellington via video link

“We have to find it within a week or two of it getting here and we have got to have an extermination programme within 10 kilometres immediately. Because, not only do beehives get shifted all over the country, the bees fly all over the country and they get blown by the wind too,” Berry pointed out.

An alarming occurrence was Walsh – Biosecurity NZ director incursion responses – not appearing to appreciate the transient and vast nature of honey bee foraging behaviour as outlined by Berry.

“You are not really different from a lot of other industries,” Walsh said as he stopped in for about an hour mid-meeting.

“The cattle industry ships their stock around the country very regularly, on massive volume. Mycoplasma Bovis was able to move around very quickly, yet we have managed to deal with that.”

In order to best work with MPI on strengthening biosecurity, Walsh pointed to the beekeeping industry becoming a signatory of the Government Industry Agreement (GIA). A GIA acts as a framework for how government and industry work together to plan for incursions and then respond to them.

“It’s a club and by becoming a member of GIA it gives you some rights to participate with MPI in a joint decision-making role. Should an incursion occur, we have agreed to respond together. With rights comes responsibility though and part of the commitment is industries will co-fund a response,” Walsh said.

The GIA also provides for working with other effected industries, which will likely be relevant due to the beekeeping industry’s role as essential pollinators to many New Zealand crops, Walsh explained.

“That’s the framework you should all be thinking about, but it does require a sector group to become a member and that is something you are going to have to work out.”

The meeting facilitator addressed the elephant in the room there.

“For all sorts of reasons we don’t need to go into here, we don’t yet have a GIA-ready-group. What do we do in the mean time?” Fletcher asked the audience.

“It’s an intolerable place to be.”

American Foulbrood Pest Management Plan (AFB PMP) chair Mark Dingle summed up the current state of response, “we are hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst would be a much better plan”.

With that bleak outlook portrayed, Dingle offered to be the meeting point for an industry working group that might bring other groups and beekeepers together. However, the AFB PMP board chair was at pains to point out that resources of the Plan must only be used for the sake of AFB elimination and not any extra task, no matter how admirable.

“I think we would need to define terms of reference, so we are clear as to the scope of the issue we are looking to address, that we have a timeframe and then look to appoint people to that working group … to report back with a list of recommendations as to a way forward,” Dingle said.

A Road, but to Where? And How Many?

Along with biosecurity, more key issues for the apiculture industry emerged, which had not been raised in any detail at the initial roundtable three weeks earlier. Significant market access issues for New Zealand honeys, the need for industry-wide data collection, and beekeeper education were all mentioned.

“I suggest we look to put together an agenda that looks at particular issues to test the ones where there is a clear industry wide sense that there is a priority,” Fletcher said.

“A meeting with a purpose, to work through an agenda to say 'do this, then that', rather than anything else.”

All that will take place while ApiNZ continues down their own path of seeking to reform as a functional and sustainable, all-encompassing industry body.

Will both roads run parallel and arrive at the same destination only to diverge onto their well-worn opposing paths again? Many beekeepers will be hoping any destination is a figurative ‘Damascus’ and those at the head of the vehicles don’t fail to ‘see the light’ on the way.