Future of Food · Issue 13 · October 2026

Governed for yesterday

Is the boardroom holding the New Zealand food sector back?

Our boards are well built for business as usual. The harder question is whether they are built for what is coming.

I put governance on the 2026 E Tipu programme because I think the boardroom has quietly become one of the slowest moving parts of our food system. That is not a criticism of the people around the table. Our boards carry deep sector knowledge and a real connection to the growers and farmers whose livelihoods depend on their decisions.

The opportunity is to point that same care at the longer-term future. Seasons are tighter, resources are stretched and crises arrive back to back, which is exactly why boards need protected space to ask what is changing and where innovation investment could take them. Alison Barrass and Alison Watters bring the view from inside real boardrooms, from Cyclone Gabrielle to what Alison Watters calls the innovation paradox.

What the issue covers

  • Only 19 percent of directors in EY's Board of the Future research think today's governance model is fully sustainable.
  • Boards exist to govern risk intelligently, not to remove it. Take out all the risk and you usually take out the growth as well.
  • New Zealand spent a record $6.4 billion on R&D in 2024, but that is still only 1.54 percent of GDP against an OECD average of about 2.6 percent.
  • Give long-horizon innovation its own agenda time, name your risk appetite in the board papers, and reward what you learn, not just the outcome.

A question to take to your next board or leadership meeting

How much of your board's time last year went to the next ten years rather than the last quarter?

Work through it with me
Written by
Carolyn Enting and Dr Victoria Hatton
Research led by
Ebony Leake
With contributions from
  • Alison Barrass, professional director
  • Alison Watters, professional director

The Future of Food series was originally published by FoodHQ Innovation Limited between 2024 and 2026, while I was Chief Executive. Each issue is reproduced here in full, with thanks to my co-authors, the contributors and FoodHQ's partners.