Opportunities for Food Systems Planning in New Zealand

Planners are interested in promoting and facilitating the creation of healthy, liveable, vibrant communities which work toward goals of sustainability, or the potential to exist indefinitely whilst maintaining or improving the social, environmental and economic resource bases they are embedded within. These principles have motivated planners to engage in a wide variety of activities, stepping in to balance market failures or facilitating community development using planning principles. Yet until recently, the provision of a healthy, adequate, sustainable and secure food supply to a city's residents has been left purely up to market forces, despite evidence of several serious market failures. However, in the past decade, a new field of planning practice, known as food systems planning, has emerged and become well established across North America, Europe and Australia. Food systems can be understood as the processes by which food is produced, processed, distributed, retailed, consumed and the associated waste products disposed of, as well as the associated inputs and outputs at each stage. Food systems planning seeks to utilise planning principles, such as stakeholder participation and the creation of plans and policies, to help facilitate movement of local food systems towards sustainability objectives, ideally whilst also benefiting other elements of the local community. Food systems planning initiatives have been highly successful overseas, in many cases initiatives have been launched in contexts that are not dissimilar to New Zealand. However, food systems planning methods and frameworks have not as yet been adopted by planners and local governments within New Zealand. This thesis sought to evaluate the opportunities for adapting and implementing food systems planning principles in the New Zealand context. A broad and comprehensive evaluation was undertaken of both food systems characteristics and government frameworks in New Zealand. The results were then considered in the context of food systems planning literature. This thesis presents that research, and identifies significant opportunities for food systems planning principles to be further developed and implemented in New Zealand