It’s time to take food security in New Zealand seriously
Food security in New Zealand is rapidly deteriorating, with rising demand for foodbanks and growing evidence that the cost of living crisis is pushing more families into hardship despite the country’s vast food production.
Food security in New Zealand is worsening…
Foodbank demand surging across New Zealand
City Mission Whanganui faces closure as food aid demand surges another 30%
A key support agency in Whanganui is struggling to keep its doors open as food assistance requests soar.
Demand at City Mission Whanganui for food services rose more than 30% in January and February – on top of a 100% increase in 2025 from 2024.
City Mission is struggling to meet the rising demand.
NZME
The scale of food insecurity in New Zealand
600,000 Kiwis rely on Foodbanks every month and almost 180,000 children are in material hardship.
All of this in a land of plenty!
Hunger Monitor 2025: Food insecurity surges as cost of living bites – Editorial
- The 2025 Hunger Monitor report shows one in three households struggled with food access last year.
- Nearly 70% experiencing food insecurity faced it for the first time, with severe cases in one in five households.
- Waikato reported higher food insecurity at 40%, with foodbanks struggling to meet rising demand.
NZME
I am sick to death of having to compete with the 40 million middle class Chinese who can compete for prices to food that is grown in NZ!
New Zealand produces enough food for 40 million
By the numbers: Who is eating all of our food if we make enough to feed 40 million people?
Experts are calling for a national food plan to tackle problems of food insecurity – despite the country producing enough food to feed 40 million people a year.
New Zealand ranks 14th in the world for food self-sufficiency – but you wouldn’t always know it by our supermarket shelves.
So how much food are we actually producing, and who is eating it all?
40 million
As a nation of five million people, New Zealand feeds more than 40 million global consumers each year, according to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.
Should New Zealand prioritise feeding its own people?
..why should we be competing against international prices for food grown here?
We need a Kiwi subsidy on all local produce to recognise that producers have already used water and generated local emissions contributing to climate change to create their product and as such consumers have already paid a price just to get the product to their table.
We should feed the 5 million here first before boasting about feeding 40 million worldwide!
Calls to ‘feed the 5 million first’ before exporting NZ food
People are going hungry even though New Zealand produces enough food to feed 40 million – and it’s spurring calls for the country to “feed the five million first”.
Almost 40% of New Zealand households experience food insecurity, while 19% of children live in households that experience food insecurity.
Poverty researcher Dr Rebekah Graham said while working on her thesis on food insecurity, she interviewed a woman who walked for 90 minutes each day to get a free community meal.
…it is outrageous that children born in this nation cannot taste the harvest of New Zealand, because it is being sold to the wealthy overseas!
The Left must force a bargain with Farmers and Growers for strategically essential reasons.
They are going to feed us when the famine comes.
A recent report on food security found NZ had incredibly low food security because it was so open market driven and refused to subsidise farmers.
Which is where we on the Left must drive the debate.
A case for subsidising local food production
We should absolutely consider subsidising food grown by NZ farmers and horticulturalists and our seafood and meat and dairy that generates a 15% price reduction for all NZ produce consumed here.
For growers we need to protect our most productive growing land for food by giving those producers tax breaks to ensure they can continue to feed New Zealanders first.
Rebuilding a direct link between the harvest grown here, the people who grow it and a grateful local market who enjoy the product WITH a 15% price reduction.
Climate change and the future of food security
Climate change will kill global free market supply chains, we are locked into hyper-regionalism. We need to build new economic structures, subsidising NZ kai for the domestic market would lock in certainty for producers while strengthening food security for the population.
We have to find new ways of working together to ensure we can survive what’s coming.
The old greeds, the old hates and the old exploitations will no longer hold the system together if that system is melting in real time.
Super-rich warned of ‘pitchforks and torches’ unless they tackle inequality
Global elite told at London’s Savoy hotel of real risk of ‘civil disruption’ if more is not done to help struggling millions
This is the age of consequences.
They won’t be pleasant.
If we continue to treat food purely as an export commodity rather than a human necessity, the consequences won’t just be economic — they will be social, political, and deeply destabilising.
Food subsidies! How about just not taxing food and water.
Which leftish parties are going to delete the charging of GST at Supermarkets and Dairies on Day One after the election.
Labour, Green, TPM, Top please let the readers at TDB know.
The feeding 40 million is bullshit based on the calories contained in those bags of milk powder and boxes of burger patties we export. The response by this government to the so called fuel crisis shows that they just want poor people and beneficiaries to go away somewhere and die in a ditch. The destruction of our food processing industry should be of real concern. If we can’t grow and freeze our own peas what hope is there. Not only do the policies of this government threaten the food security of so many families, they also threaten the food security of our whole country
It’s a stain on NZ that its people have to compete with overseas food markets, especially since our country has already invested in that produce. That is a ‘national disgrace’ and has to be rectified, eg when a leg of our lamb is cheaper in the UK than NZ then way past time for ‘charity to begin at home’, not have us fleeced with lower grade produce and higher prices! Step up NZ, we are your voters; give us a level playing field.