The Story of Fresh Fruit & Vegetables - from Seed to Plate

The story of fresh fruit and vegetables - from the seed to your plate

Thursday 13 July 2017 - A video showing the story of New Zealand’s fresh fruit and vegetables, from the seed through to food on a plate, was launched by Horticulture New Zealand today.

"New Zealand horticulture has a great story to tell," Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman says. "New Zealand’s fresh fruit and vegetables story is one of successful, inter-generational family businesses providing good, healthy food for everybody, every day. They use sustainable, environmentally sound production practices that look after the land for the future.

"Horticulture has been the unsung hero of the primary industries and we thought it was time people knew our story, particularly as we are going through significant growth. There are a number of trends that have prompted us to make this video.

"The population make-up of New Zealand is changing and city dwellers no longer have connections with rural communities that they once might have had. So there is not the understanding of what goes into getting fresh food onto their plate.

"Trends indicate a strong desire by consumers to both buy food grown locally, and to understand what has gone into producing their food. They want to know sustainable and environmentally friendly practices have been used and that the people working for the food producing companies are treated properly and paid appropriately.

"Globally, consumers want fresh fruit and vegetables from New Zealand because we have a well-earned reputation for providing safe, healthy food that meets consumer expectations around sustainability and the environment.

"And increasingly, people are looking to a healthy diet to improve their overall health. While some shoppers will always be driven by price, there are people who want to factor other things into decisions about what they buy.

"So we have given people a chance to see some of the innovative work our growers are doing, particularly on environmental aspects of their business, to bring them the freshest and healthiest food."

The video, launched at Horticulture Conference 2017 in Tauranga, can be viewed here.

ENDS

About Horticulture Conference 2017

The Horticulture Conference 2017, held at ASB Baypark, Tauranga, from 12 to 14 July, is the conference of Horticulture New Zealand, Vegetables New Zealand, Tomatoes NZ and the New Zealand Asparagus Council

The conference is being made possible with support from Platinum sponsor Countdown; Gold sponsors T&G Global, United Fresh and Plant & Food Research; and Bronze sponsors AsureQuality, Apunga, Dow AgroSciences, Etec Crop Solutions, Eurofins, Farmgard, Fruit Logistica, Fritons Limited, Hill Laboratories, MG Marketing, NZKGI, Pacon, Primary ITO, Rabobank, Radfords Software, Viscount FCC, and Zespri.

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