But seriously, the success of the Kiwifruit industry internationally is down to a number of factors, not least of all being the business model.  Zespri is a marketing (export only) and innovation organisation that doesn’t own any fruit growing or processing assets, but is rather a grower-owned co-operative.  As such there is no propensity for growers to engage in a race to the bottom, out-competing each other on price to the delight of wholesalers and retailers offshore.

The numbers Zespri showed us were pretty impressive, revealing that the business has grown quite dramatically in terms of both volume and income, while managing to establish a brand position at the high value / premium end of the market.  There is also evidence of increasing production efficiency, demonstrated by the industry’s much improved yield per hectare of land.  The carbon and water footprint is also relatively light.

The co-operative model is one that we should pay more attention to, as the evidence is it is a very powerful business model and one that aligns quite closely with Green principles. 

NZ Cooperatives Association define a co-op as “ An enterprise, freely established, that is owned and controlled by a group of legal persons for the purpose of equitably providing themselves with mutual benefits arising from the activities of the enterprise, and not primarily from investment in it.

That’s a bit of a mouthful, but have a look here to find out what it means in practice.

Zespri is a good example of how commercial success and doing some pretty good things in the sustainability space can go hand in hand.  There are some organic growers in the Co-op., and they are enjoying a pretty useful price premium for their fruit, which hopefully will encourage others to make the transition (one of the organic success stories features here).

Zespri have done a full product lifecycle carbon footprint for all of their products, which both gives them a baseline against which to set reduction targets, and reduces the likelihood of customer resistance in markets where basic ‘foodmiles’ analysis might otherwise be a problem.

They have done some good work around energy efficiency, and (my personal ‘cradle to cradle’ favourite), are working to develop bio-plastics derived from kiwifruit skins, fruit hair, flowers and waste fruit  which can be used in packaging and other products.

Lloyds point out that 300 years of experience has given them a bit of an understanding of risk, and it is from that platform that they suggest that now is a really good time to get serious about finding ‘a new energy paradigm’.

The summary says that “The primary purpose of this report is to remind the reader that all businesses, not just the energy sector, need to consider how they, their suppliers and their customers will be affected by energy supplies which are less reliable and more expensive…reputations will be won or lost as the public demands that businesses reduce their environmental footprint.’

The report includes some of the bad news for those wishing things could just stay the same, with key points like :

• Businesses which prepare for and take advantage of the new energy reality will prosper – failure to do so could be catastrophic
• Market dynamics and environmental factors mean business can no longer rely on low cost traditional energy sources
• We are heading towards a global oil supply crunch and price spike
• Energy infrastructure will become increasingly vulnerable as a result of climate change and operations in harsher environments

The (potentially) good news is captured too :

• Investment in renewable energy and ‘intelligent’ infrastructure is booming. This revolution presents huge opportunities for new business partnerships

We have a history of creative design and innovation, and developing both hardware and software to support clean – tech approaches is an area where we could reap real economic success and make a positive contribution to managing climate change.  All we need now is a government that understands the opportunity and will create the policy settings to help make it happen!

Some really topical issues were raised, like how small business can get access to training and other support; how a co-operative model could be a real winner for some; how there are some very perverse incentives around research and development. The discussion was wide ranging and animated, and gave us real confidence that ‘Listening Post’ meetings will prove their worth.

This event was the first of many I plan to host around the country as part of  the nationwide ‘Smart Business’ campaign that I launched last week. I want to strengthen and widen our links into the small business community,  and  to find out what I can do for them as the Green Party’s small business spokesperson.

It is becoming increasingly recognised that the issues facing small business differ to those facing big business. Therefore, any law changes that affect small business need to take into account the context in which they operate. We can should not  assume that one business is just the same as the next. I can vouch for that from having owned my own small retail business and having managed others! 

I also understand how busy small business owners are and for those that can’t make an event but still want to voice their opinion, we have put together an online survey. So, if you own a small to medium enterprise (SME) please take a few minutes to fill this out and pass around your networks.

This is an opportunity to share your views about what central government is (or is not) doing for business and to tell me what you think could help your business prosper. Please make the most of it!

That report was buried by the Bush administration but managed to leak out anyway. Did we listen? No.

Now one of the world’s biggest insurers is telling business that the two biggest risks they face are peak oil and climate change. It seems Lloyd’s has gone a bit green, or has started reading frogblog.

The White Paper, put out by Lloyd’s and Chatham House, is called Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities for business.

Traditional fossil fuel resources face serious supply constraints and an oil supply crunch is likely in the short-to-medium term with profound consequences for the way in which business functions today.

I recommend that everyone reads this document.

Meanwhile, President Obama is telling America to get ready for an oil constrained future. Many are calling this his ‘war on peak oil‘ speech, but he doesn’t mention peak oil directly, and seems to hint that an awful lot more drilling and oil spills will be necessary in the future. Yuk.

When will our Government wake up to the reality? When will we stop borrowing to build new roads to nowhere, rather than maintaining the road network we already have and optimising its shared use with public transport?

Surely our Government’s public denial of the realities of peak oil suffers from a serious credibility gap?

The current law restricts shops from trading on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. That law – the Shop Trading Hours Act Repeal Act 1990 – specifies three and a half days each year on which most New Zealand retailers must close – Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday and until 1pm on Anzac Day.

However, the Act does allow certain types of shops to remain open on restricted days. These are shops whose main purpose is to provide essential supplies in quantities which people in the area or travelling through may need. This all seems pretty straight forward but when you take a closer look at the ‘rules’ that decide if a shop can be open or not on one of these sacred days there seems to be a few anomalies thrown into the mix:

• Bizarrely, real estate agencies are not affected by the Act and are allowed to be operate under normal working hours on any of the aforementioned days.
• Even more bizarrely, garden centres are graced with the privilege of the option to be open on Easter Sunday, though I struggle to see how compost and pot plants can be argued as “essential supplies”
• Even more bizarrely again, a limited number of (tourist) areas, such as Taupo and Queenstown are covered by exemptions to the trading restrictions. Or in plain language, different rules again apply to these ‘tourist’ areas compared to the rest of the country.

By the Green Party’s count, there has been something like eight Members’ Bills before the House since 1996 proposing to amend the Shop Trading Hours Act to allow trading on the ‘potentially profitable’ Easter Sunday.  Many arguments have been put forward to support or oppose certain shops being open on these restricted days; religious reasons (from Christians and non-Christians) and the bottom line seem to be recurring points raised. However, Green Party Policy (which may be unpopular with some shop owners and customers) is that each of these days shielded by the Act should remain.  Protecting these holidays ensures that workers get at least some free time with their family and friends. Good Friday and Easter Sunday, for some, are two of the three and a half days of the year when family life cannot be impinged upon by work commitments or a commitment to consumerism.

David Clendon MP clearly outlines the Green Party’s arguments on this issue in the First Reading of the Shop Trading Hours Act 1990 Repeal (Easter Sunday Local Choice) Amendment Bill. 

So, shop owners, retailers, customers, shop workers, what do you think?

Should all shops be allowed to be open over Easter? Or should all shops be forced to close?

Can we survive the whole Easter weekend without access to every commercial outlet?

Should Easter Sunday just be made a public holiday so people who have to work that day get a day in lieu to spend with their families?

Over to you….

M&S says environmental and social issues remain important to UK consumers. A survey commissioned by M&S found that 72% of people surveyed are worried about environmental issues, with 73% saying that the recession had not changed their level of concern.

The commissioned research is part of a huge initiative that M&S announced back in 2007 to become the world’s most sustainable retailer by 2015. More simply referred to as ‘Plan A’. As, to quote M&S, there is no Plan B.

 M&S’s ‘Plan A’ eco-commitments include:

• converting 2.7 billion food, clothing and home items to meet the plan’s sustainability standards
• encouraging 10,000 food supplying farmers to adopt a sustainable foods programme

UK customers, along with the rest of the world, will be looking more and more for sustainability credentials in the products they choose to buy. Unless NZ businesses start respecting this they will not be able to access high value overseas markets in the future. The previous Government provided a level of funding and other support through the Ministry for the Environment, local authorities and organisations promoting and supporting sustainable business. The current Government would do well to reinstate and indeed increase that funding to ensure we are not left on the sidelines when it comes to international exports. A point clearly expressed in the Green Party’s sustainable business policy.

‘Sustainability’ may have been declared a word that government policy makers may not utter, but in the meantime the rest of the world, not least of all the business sector, is getting on with the real challenge of making their production and consumption patterns more sustainable.

Something has to change and while the Government seems unwilling to take the lead on this massive issue, the best and brightest of our businesses, farmers, producers, will take their future into their own hands and start practicing business the way it should be.

To start with, we have the utterly confused and ambiguous signals to business regarding the status of the ETS, as highlighted in Jeanette’s post here the other day. What is clear is that John Key has either no comprehension whatsoever about how the ETS works, or he has such a dastardly plan up his sleeve that he dare not say anything lest he let the cat out of the bag. I opt for the former. Like the hillariously incompetent Keystone Cops, we have Key, Brownlee, Dunne and Hide all saying different things about the current and future status of the ETS.

No good deed goes unpunished, so now we have the Electricity Commission saying that they are not likely to approve Transpower’s NAaN grid upgrade, because of the uncertainty surrounding Genesis’ Rodney Power Station. The  Rodney District Council deffered their final decision on the Rodney Station last week, pending the uncertainty surrounding the Electricity Commission’s decision on the NAaN upgrade!

The only thing certain in all this is that there is no certainty for business. Not for the Energy Sector, the Agriculture Sector nor the Forestry Sector. Now parliament has risen until February, and boards across the country are left wondering just what they got for their first 100 days of a National led government. In short – they are worse off and worse informed than they were before the election.

Kick starting infrastructure investment?

Yeah Right!

Aspirational for New Zealand?

Yeah Right!

Balancing environmental protection with economic opportunity?

Yeah Right!

In that last case we have ended up with less of both. I thought that National was the party of business interests?

About a week after the election, reassured by pre-election statements that there would still be an ETS, though it might be different, a major forestry company was about 12 hours away from concluding a sale of forestry credits. They had achieved a price of NZ$30/tonne. The legislation passed last August provided that the ETS comes into effect for forestry on 1 January ’08, though not for energy till ’10 or transport till ’11. That is still the law.

From 1 January ’09 foresters can apply to have NZ units credited to their account in the registry, and can then sell them.

Then Key announced, part way through the coalition negotiations, that the ETS might be “repealed”. The buyer immediately shot through. Now we have Gerry Brownlee announcing that there will still be an ETS (despite setting up a committee to consider whether a carbon tax would be better) but business is gun-shy now and no-one is going to commit investment based on that.

The interesting question is, what does “put on hold” mean for forestry? If companies apply on 1 January to have units transferred to their account for carbon sequestered during 2008 by their post-1989 forests, as the law provides, will those units be forthcoming? That is dependent on whether MAF has completed the work needed to rollout the mapping tool that allows foresters to prove that their land is eligible. They were on track to have this done in time to meet the requirements of the law; have they been told not to proceed?

If so, under what authority? You can’t suspend the law just by announcing it. I was fully expecting an amendment bill to come to Parliament before Christmas, changing the date of coming into force for forestry. That hasn’t happened. Just as well, as that would also “put on hold” the deforestation penalties for those who clear and don’t replant, and lead to a frenzy of land conversion for dairying, with more damage to our emissions profile. That would be ironic, as Nick Smith grandstanded constantly in the last Parliament, attacking the Labour government for mismanaging the question of forestry credits and causing a landslide of dairy conversions in the year before the penalty came into force.

Of all people, a key player in the financial markets which rely on rumour and reading the tea leaves as they make their daily trades, should understand the damage loose talk can do to business confidence.

 But now I find out why thanks to Roger Douglas’s blog:

The cost of doing business in New Zealand is in many ways, beyond belief.

•   Resource Management Act.
•   Nutty regulation (dogs); anti-smacking legislation.
•   Emissions Trading Scheme.

Yup, section 59 is increasing the cost of doing business in New Zealand.  Maybe it’s because if you haven’t given your child a good beating with a hosepipe in the morning you’re not feeling at your most productive when you get to work?  Or maybe violence against children was being used as a productivity measure by parents who employed their own children in their businesses? Who knows. Anyway it is somehow linked to the impact dogs and nuts have on business expenses. And these guys claim they know about the big issues facing the economy. 

Fonterra’s response to it’s subsidairy Sanlu Group, which had been using melamine (a substance used in plastics, fertilisers and glues and flame retardants) to make its milk powder protein levels appear higher, has human as well as economic implications.

Baby milk powder is one of those products that, thanks to huge multinational domination of the market, consumers have very little purchaser choice in any more.  Which makes food safety and consumer choice that much more important.  TVNZ reports:

Fonterra refused an interview. But the company should be fronting up, according to food safety advocate, Sue Kedgley.

Basically, in a situation like this, it is incumbent on Fonterra to be open and upfront. Depending on the level of Fonterra’s involvement, there are potentially very serious repercussions for Fonterra’s global reputation,” says Kedgley.

So among the sub-categories of the ten topics that New Zealand was ranked on were the ease and cheapness with which you can get rid of workers, how much you have to pay if you go bankrupt, the regulations that constrain businesses (which I assume include important environmental protections like the Resource Management Act), the smallness of the amount of tax that businesses need to pay and the extent of director liability if something goes wrong.

And the result is New Zealand shares the top four placing with social democracies like Singapore, Hong Kong (China) and the United States.  Meanwhile a bit further down the ladder sit most Scandinavians Norway (10) Iceland (11), Finland (14) and Sweden at (17).  Which, if you admire those countries’ social well-being, just goes to show that ease of doing business does not a complete society make. 

I’m not saying that ease of doing business is a bad thing, but let’s remember that sometimes regulations, environmental protections and workers rights are there for a reason, and before we celebrate their absence we should check why other democratic countries chose to retain them.

Put that in the context of New Zealand and Human Rights Commission’s 2008 Census of Women’s Participation [pdf], which shows that 8.65% of directors in New Zealand’s top hundred listed companies are women. This comprises 54 female directorships held by 45 women out of the total of 624 directorships.  I’m less concerned about the environment here than I am about the sheer wrongness in our culture that allows a statistic like that to emerge.  Sixty of the top 100 companies on the New Zealand Stock Exchange have no women on their boards.

If all those men aren’t going to save the planet maybe it’s time they step aside.

But while we are on the relationship between the leadership of women and the wellbeing of the environment, the same HRC report ranks state sector appointments to boards too, and finds that the Ministry of the Environment is 4th worst out of 30 state ministries, departments and agencies for appointing women to its relevant boards. 26% of its appointees are female. Which means we can only expect less environmentally friendly decisions coming out boards appointed by the Ministry of Tourism, NZQA and Veterans’ Affairs NZ.

6 of those 30 administering agencies have achieved parity of women on boards or better.