Launched today in partnership between AGMARDT and KPMG New Zealand (KPMG), The Common Ground is a proposed collaboration platform – a place for the food & fibre sector to tackle shared, ‘wicked’ problems together.
“This is a vision to supercharge collaboration between the 150+ industry good organisations that work on behalf of the food & fibre sector,” says Lee-Ann Marsh, AGMARDT General Manager.
“This launch is a call to everyone from across the food & fibre sector to join a constructive conversation about our collective future. To start that kōrero, we’re proposing one potential vision, The Common Ground platform. Its purpose is to stimulate discussion and debate on how we break down siloes and meet the many shared opportunities and challenges ahead,” says Marsh.
Developed by AGMARDT and KPMG, with input from a diverse range of sector stakeholders, The Common Ground is presented as part of the thought leadership report ‘Are industry good organisations good for industry?’.
KPMG Global Head of Agribusiness Ian Proudfoot says The Common Ground concept can help unlock new funding opportunities and orient the sector’s focus “outwards towards global markets, rather than being overly-focussed inwards behind the farmgate.”
“By driving collaboration across industries, we’ll become better at solving complex problems and capturing global market opportunities. By pooling resources from across our value chains, we’ll unlock international, government and other funding we all need to grow exports to fuel prosperity for our country.”
Proudfoot says that while the current industry good system has delivered much success to this point, its constraints can no longer be ignored.
“An erosion of trust, short-term decision-making, siloed inefficiency and the lack of focus on global markets are limiting our ability to confront risks and compete for global capital and market share. The Common Ground is about developing the food & fibre sector’s collaborative capacity over time – embedding the trust and problem-solving behaviours we need to be genuinely resilient and competitive on the world stage”.
The Common Ground platform would focus on two main functions: hosting Communities of Action to solve shared challenges and serving as the sector’s ‘back-office engine room’.
Through Communities of Action, The Common Ground would enable industry bodies to pool their top talent and resources to address specific, cross-sector issues (while retaining their independence and focus on industry-specific concerns).
Under this agile structure, the sector would be better placed to tackle shared challenges and high-value opportunities like on-farm energy, rural wellbeing, high value exporting, zero carbon production systems, sustainable oceans, protection of Taonga (IP/mātauranga), water quality & quantity, diversification of producer income, future workforce & agri-education, soil health, rural prosperity, biodiversity, animal welfare and adapting to climate volatility.
The Common Ground would also serve as the sector’s ‘back-office engine room’. This would include operating a standard enterprise platform shared by all participating organisations – cutting the estimated $9+ million NZD industry organisations spend annually on duplicated back-office services like software, accounting, legal or HR.
The Common Ground would also be an ideal host for a shared data exchange service – reducing data-entry duplication for individual producers – and could deploy services most industry bodies need, but can’t always afford, like soil & water heath teams, R&D support, economists, futurists or policy analysts.
“The Common Ground is just one version of what a fit-for-future industry good system might look like. We want to hear from all corners from the sector – from those across our farms, orchards, forests, fisheries and boardrooms – about their vision for the future of industry good” says Marsh.
The Common Ground proposal, report and opportunities to provide feedback are available at www.thecommonground.org.nz.
