Securing water and fertiliser to back NZ farmers

Reliable access to water and fertiliser is critical to on-farm productivity. National will remove roadblocks to new water storage infrastructure and reduce our exposure to volatile global fertiliser markets.

New Zealand’s farmers and growers are the best in the world. When they do well, the whole country does well. The primary sector produces 82 per cent of New Zealand’s exports and that money pays for the hospitals, schools and roads every community relies on. When farming grows, wages lift and our towns grow with it.

In much the same way as New Zealand ensures we have security of fuel and energy, security of water and fertiliser enables our farmers to produce food and generate the exports that are currently worth $65.2 billion to New Zealand’s economy.

When farmers and growers have reliable water, they produce more, take on more staff and more money flows into the local town, which means more jobs in regional communities.

National have an ambitious agenda for growth and the world wants what we produce. In three years, we have signed trade deals with India and the United Arab Emirates and completed an agreement with the Gulf states, and brought our deal with the European Union into force early. The job now is to produce more of it.

National back our farmers to get on with what they do best.