Running toward the hard conversations: Agriculture and climate resilience

Agriculture has long been the backbone of New Zealand’s economy, but it now sits at the sharp edge of climate change. As droughts, floods and cyclones disrupt production, the question is no longer whether our food and fibre sector must adapt, but how fast and how far. Recent insights from KPMG’s Agribusiness Agenda 2025 and its Reimagining a Global Food System Resilience report highlight both the urgency and the opportunity: resilience, adaptation, and innovation must move from conversation to execution.

One of the more telling shifts highlighted in the Agribusiness Agenda is how climate resilience has climbed the priority list. Just a year ago, ‘transition to climate resilient systems’ was ranked at the very bottom of industry priorities, despite the devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle. In 2025 it jumped 23 places to sit at 18^th on the list reflecting a 40% increase in urgency. This change is significant because it reflects an industry beginning to recognise that climate volatility is no longer a future risk but a present reality. Extreme weather has brought home the costs of inaction – costs that extend well beyond individual farms to whole communities, infrastructure and national food security.

The global perspective is equally sobering. The Food System Resilience report points out that resilience is not just about bouncing back after shocks but about ‘bouncing forward’ – embedding flexibility, diversity and circularity into food systems. For New Zealand this means moving beyond incremental adjustments to fundamental redesign: more resilient land use, diversified revenue streams and investment in natural capital. In practice this will mean having difficult conversations about land use change, managed retreat and uninsurable land. These are uncomfortable topics but avoiding them only delays the inevitable and leaves communities more vulnerable.

For many farmers, the challenges of the past year have been compounded by financial pressures, regulatory complexity and shifting consumer expectations. High interest rates and slow consenting processes often make ‘doing nothing’ the easiest option, even when it comes at long-term cost. Yet the same report captures strong appetite for innovation such as the uptake of AI and precision farming tools, new biotechnology or renewable energy solutions that could transform productivity and sustainability. The barriers are not a lack of ideas but the absence of clear pathways, supportive regulation and investment frameworks that give farmers confidence to act.

At the 2025 Climate Change and Business Conference, Sam Bridgman from Pāmu illustrated this challenge from a farming perspective, describing how the company has moved beyond desktop climate risk assessments to consider what the findings mean on farm. For Pāmu, the three biggest adaptation challenges are managing water – too much or too little, sometimes in the same year – safeguarding animal health in more extreme conditions and supporting the wellbeing of people who continue to work outside regardless of the weather. He also reflected on the Agribusiness Agenda, noting how climate resilience has fluctuated in priority rankings over recent years, but that conversations about adaptation tend to generate stronger engagement than discussions about emissions reduction, because farmers see the effects of climate change every day in the paddock.

Underlying all these themes is a simple but powerful call for curiosity. As the Agribusiness Agenda puts it, curious boards “run toward the hard conversations because they are hard, which makes them interesting, stimulating, challenging and packed with opportunity”. They ask: what if the status quo no longer holds? What if long-accepted assumptions prove untenable? They listen to diverse voices, from iwi leaders who bring intergenerational perspectives, to young farmers and rangatahi who will inherit the sector, to scientists and innovators pushing the boundaries of possibility. By bringing these voices into the boardroom, directors can challenge comfortable assumptions and push the sector to consider futures that are not only possible but necessary.

The role of governance, then, is to create the conditions for resilience. A theme reinforced by the voices of sustainability leaders within the Agribusiness Agenda where sustainability in today’s world is seen as “about engineering resilience into an organisation, so that whatever happens in respect of shocks or shifts, the business and its team are clear on their direction of travel, their values and why they exist”. That means prioritising investment in energy efficiency, soil health and water resilience – actions that make sense in any climate future. It means ensuring the board’s agenda connects food, energy, environment and community rather than treating them as separate issues. It means demanding from management not just a focus on short-term survival but a strategy for long-term transformation. And it means being willing to confront uncomfortable realities, whether that’s the need to shift land use, invest in new technologies, or rethink the fundamentals of how we grow, distribute and consume food.

Agriculture and climate change are not parallel challenges. As the KPMG reports show, resilience is now a commercial imperative, not a “nice to have.” For New Zealand’s directors, the call is to lead with curiosity, courage and urgency. Because resilience is not built in the middle of crisis. It is built in the decisions we make now.