When we talk about food insecurity in New Zealand, it’s usually a question of whether or not supermarkets are affordable, or what kind of shops people can easily access: Do their neighbourhoods have plenty of fruit and veggie stores, or do they have plenty of fast-food outlets?
A significant number of New Zealanders don’t get all their food from a shop, says University of Auckland postdoctoral researcher Madeline Shelling (Ngāti Porou). When we measure food insecurity, other factors need considering, she says, like whether people can hunt, gather and grow their own kai, or access networks for sharing food.
“The only things that currently are seen as valuable are supermarkets and incomes,” says Shelling. “That’s where the government is pouring their resources. We’re all trying to say, ‘That’s not how a lot of us get a lot of our food—or how we want to get our food’.”
The fact that these other food sources aren’t considered in official metrics means they’re not seen as valuable, says Shelling, and so they’re not protected.
Who’s going hungry, and how do we know?
New Zealand measures food security with a United States-based model which was originally developed for the country in 1997. “We’ve used it ever since, and it’s very monocultural,” says Shelling. “It doesn’t recognise any kind of food system other than ‘you receive your pay packet, and then you go to the supermarket’.”
This leaves out several alternate food sources. “It ignores all Māori food systems—because we never had money or supermarkets—but it also ignores how a lot of Aotearoa gets our food. Hunting, fishing, diving, all those things… it just doesn’t include those.”
Shelling is setting out to develop a food insecurity measurement tool that’s more relevant to these other systems. “If we’re not counting those, if we’re not measuring them, we’re not assessing them, then they’re not seen as valuable.”
Around the world, indigenous groups have adapted similar tools to better understand their food networks. “Is it from trading with other people in the community? Is it hunting? Is it fishing? Is it from a traditional ceremony? And while those seem like really basic questions, they actually give a real insight into where people get their food from.”
Loss of land directly leads to food insecurity
One of Shelling’s research participants described how their family used to put down a net in a local river to catch eels. But when they lost access to the river, they also lost a cheap and healthy food source—one that has figured prominently in the Māori diet for centuries.
In fact, land alienation has long been a driver of food insecurity for Māori, found Shelling’s PhD research. “All of the ordinances and legislation from the Native Lands Act in 1862 have directly impacted Māori food insecurity since that time,” she says. The illegal confiscation of land—and all of the gardening, foraging, gathering and hunting areas it contained—also cut off the transmission of information around food preparation and use. “It’s a loss of language, of knowledge, of connection to their food sources,” she says.
Protecting complex, extensive food systems
Part of the problem, says Shelling, could be ignorance about the extensive nature of Māori food systems. “When you look back, the abundance year-round of Māori kai was fascinating. Now when we think about Māori kai, people are like, ‘Oh, what do you mean? Like, kererū and potatoes or whatever’? There’s this huge food system that includes not only food species, but sharing practices, knowledge practices, kaitiakitanga.”
In fact, the Māori diet was so nutritious that research has found Māori life expectancy was likely equivalent or higher to that of Europeans at the time of colonisation. Diets were rich in protein, fats and antioxidants, and following the extinction of the moa, food systems were carefully protected to avoid the loss of further species.
Today, food insecurity measures could take into account people’s ability to hunt, gather, and grow their food, “and how well the food system in that area is acknowledged and protected,” says Shelling.
A different way of obtaining food
A visit to whānau in Te Araroa on Te Tairāwhiti, the East Cape, really brought the message home to Shelling: supermarket affordability didn’t give the full picture of whether or not a family had enough to eat.
The region is considered to be in the lowest decile of deprivation, she says. “That often means that food insecurity is then assumed.”
So she decided to test that assumption—on the scale of her own whānau. “I went to my aunty’s house, and I said, knowing that I might just get the jandal, ‘Do you consider yourself food insecure?’ And she’s like, ‘You saw what was in my fridge just now.’ And it’s, like, wild pork, it’s pāua fritters, she’s got a couple of crayfish in there. She’s like, ‘I’m not food insecure. The only food issue we have is that the butter is $8’. That was a really good insight just to show that conventional indicators of material deprivation does not translate to food insecurity for Māori.”
Shelling and her whānau are concerned about plans to add a port to a nearby bay that is locally considered a kapata kai, or food cupboard; Minister for Regional Development Shane Jones recently announced the revival of an idea to put in a barging wharf at Wharekahika/Hicks Bay. Though intended to supply goods to the region, it could also damage important habitat for kaimoana collected in the bay.
Ecosystems need to be in good, healthy shape to support harvesting: Eels depend on free passage in rivers, coastal protections allow numbers of crayfish, shellfish, and other kaimoana to grow. Ensuring food security thus requires considering kai availability and protection within conservation and development plans.
“We have whānau all around Aotearoa who are desperately struggling with kai,” says Shelling. “And we need more contextualised, targeted solutions that are driven by our whānau, and we need leaders and decision-makers who will listen to those solutions and support them.”
The world is facing unprecedented environmental challenges. Planetary Solutions, an initiative of the Sustainability Hub at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, and Newsroom, explores these issues – and the practical ways we can all be part of the solution.
