Privatizing the Right to Food: Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

Aotearoa/New Zealand is a significant food exporter, a role which extends back for almost a century and a half since the introduction of refrigerated shipping in the late 19th century. The early exporting was primarily to the United Kingdom and it was the entry of the UK into the EEC in the 1960s which promoted significant reworking of the New Zealand economy as the guaranteed market, which existed at that time, disappeared. Farmers were significantly subsidized through a guaranteed prices scheme which operated for most primary products. The removal of those subsidies in the late 1980s was accompanied by the introduction of a neo-liberal framework into the country’s social and economic policies (Kelsey, 1995).