Growing foreign interest in buying New Zealand farmland raises nationally significant issues about who benefits and the money trail, a leading primary sector academic says.
Prof Jacqueline Rowarth, the head of pastoral agriculture at Massey University, said offshore interest in land raised broader questions about what was best for New Zealand, the motive of investors, where the money would end up and ensuring animal and labour welfare standards were maintained.
These were national issues which she said needed a Government response.
It has been said that future food security was a motive for such an investment, but Prof Rowarth said that needed to be clarified to end speculation it was not simply driven by profits.
The issue also highlighted the problem of farmers wanting to sell properties but few local people being able to buy them because finance was tight.
"If New Zealanders aren't going to buy them and people want to sell, what do you expect?"
A subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed Natural Dairy New Zealand, UBNZ Assets Holdings, has started looking for up to 100 Otago and Southland dairy farms to buy should the Overseas Investment Office approve its purchase of 29 North Island farms owned by the Crafar family, but which are in receivership.
Should approval be granted, Natural Dairy New Zealand would take its stake in UBNZ from 20% to 100%, source extra capital to buy further farms in both islands and build dairy factories in the central North Island and Southland.
A company representative said the factory would be the size of Open Country Dairy's plant near Invercargill, which handles 200 million litres of milk a year supplied from 94 farms.
Natural Dairy was one of several foreign-owned companies seeking to buy New Zealand farmland.
Prof Rowarth said Japanese companies had also been entering joint ventures with New Zealand entities to secure future food supplies.
She said New Zealand's international advantage was that it produced more food than it consumed, but that could be lost if overseas investors were allowed to tie up food production for their own markets.
There were other unanswered questions, such as the nationality of staff.
Previously, when Pacific Islanders came here to work, most of their wages were sent home.
If that happened with workers on foreign-owned farms, Prof Rowarth said it would dramatically diminish the economic benefits of that investment to New Zealand.
Countries had different animal, environmental and labour welfare standards and there needed to be assurances New Zealand's standards would be maintained, she said.
