Nine ways to grow a sustainable food business | Stuff.co.nz

In 2019, researchers discovered a surprising thing. Consumers in California and China were prepared to pay a premium for grass-fed, sustainably-sourced New Zealand beef. Okay, so that is not so unexpected. We do grow happy beef here. What was surprising was the size of the prize. The researchers discovered the potential to achieve a 20% price premium in the US market, equating to extra annual revenue of $238 million in export returns. Emboldened by the numbers, Beef+Lamb NZ launched ‘Taste Pure Nature’ a vertically integrated value chain involving 8000 beef, sheep and deer farmers. Just three years in, the campaign is showing promising results. Awareness and preference are up. In California, preference for New Zealand grass-fed beef is up 5%, while preference for grass-fed lamb is up 4% since March 2020. Awareness of New Zealand beef and lamb is up 19% since March 2020. “We could get so much more if we could prepare and process a greater portion of the frozen product we sell internationally and label it as grass-fed. That’s about innovating here, developing brands here, and moving up the value chain in terms of how we do things,” says Hugh Good, Beef+Lamb NZ’s global market intelligence and
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