New Kellogg research says reliance on roads and ferries leaves domestic fresh produce supply exposed when they fail.

Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme alumna Emily Levenson says growers, wholesalers and retailers she interviewed kept raising the Cook Strait ferries as an issue.

“People talked about delay, disruption, having impacts on the quality and the freshness of their produce or if that product can even make it to market that day,” she says.

Levenson says the Gisborne state highway and the Northland to Auckland route are also risks.

“You might grow a tomato in the Wellington region, it might have to go up to Auckland before being sent back out to stores in the lower North Island.”

She is calling for a farm-to-plate strategy covering everything from poverty to on-farm input costs.

Read the full report here.

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