Stories & Pānui
Building a National Food Strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand
Each year, World Food Day invites us to pause and reflect on how we feed ourselves and each other. The 2025 theme, “Hand in Hand for Better Food and a Better Future,” reminds us that food systems are at their best when built on collaboration across communities, sectors, and generations.
Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, that invitation lands with resonance.
Kai Motuhake - reflecting back and moving forwards
A year on from the publication of our Kai Motuhake resource, our co-authors - Kore Hiakai Kaimahi Moko Morris, Pou Māori and Tric Malcolm, Pou Ārahi - reflect on how it has been carried into different places and spaces.
We also include perspectives from invited contributors discussing how Kai Motuhake now shapes their mahi and is being lived out in their communities.
What does decolonisation and re-indigenisation mean to you in your context or organisation?
Reflections on Te Whiringa
In early July, Kore Hiakai hosted Te Whiringa, a two-day national hui held at Zealandia – Te Māra a Tāne in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. We gathered new members to launch our Collective, alongside longtime friends, curious newcomers, our Kai Rawa trustees, and the Kore Hiakai kaimahi unit. We also acknowledge those who couldn’t be there but are a valued part of this journey.
One of our aims was to weave together a diverse tapestry of people from across the food and equity systems. In doing so, we hoped to disrupt our collective thinking and explore how joined-up solutions across sectors and perspectives might create a food secure Aotearoa.
Let connection be our antidote
Our tamariki, our older people, our communities, our schools, our whānau, our whenua, our taiao. These are the things we value. In a world that feels quite hard right now, there is an invitation to soften ourselves and gently hold all that we truly value at the fore.
This year’s Budget Day was a bit of a mixed bag. Iwi, hapū and community food providers are grateful to have some funding continue, especially as we watch so many other seemingly essential services reduced or removed. But the funding that we have been offered is small, a drop in the bucket of our response to poverty and our journey towards a food secure Aotearoa. Yet, even a small pebble can make a ripple that continues to shift a large body of water.
Why are food banks still relevant?
Today, more people are food insecure than ever previously recorded in Aotearoa. 27% of our children – that is 263,000 tamariki - live in homes where food sometimes run out. Food banks are distributing food parcels at around twice the rate they were before COVID. In our current economic climate, unemployment is yet to peak. How we respond to this persistent need for food reveals what we choose to value, as a society.
Why we support the Employment Relations Amendment Bill
We submitted in support of the changes to the Employment Relations (Employee Remuneration Disclosure) Amendment Bill that will eliminate the kind of secrecy that allows pay gaps to persist.
We celebrate these proposed changes that can enable:
Greater transparency for employees to talk about their pay rate without facing repercussions
Pay discrimination to be more easily identified and remedied - closing pay gaps can reduce rates of food insecurity
Employees empowered to share their information and challenge unjust discrimination creates a more fair and equitable society
Where is the hope for whānau this Christmas?
At Kore Hiakai, we are conscious that Ka Mākona paints a challenging picture of life for whānau on low incomes, when earnings are inadequate to meet their everyday living costs. So, we often ask; where is the hope for our whānau?
To answer this question, Tony Fuemana, GM at Uptempo, Brittany Goodwin, Senior Policy and Advocacy Adviser at Good Shepherd, and Māhera Maihi, CEO at Mā te Huruhuru share with us about how their mahi makes a difference and a vision of their hopes for a brighter future.
What does food sovereignty mean in the context of Te Tiriti o Waitangi?
To celebrate Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori and the release of our Kai Motuhake resource –Kore Hiakai invited Kaea Tibble, co-author of Kai Motuhake, to share some of his insights on food sovereignty in the context of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
What does Te Tiriti o Waitangi have to do with food?
Through some of the mahi Kore Hiakai does around the motu, we are often asked the following question:
“What does Te Tiriti o Waitangi have to do with food?”
It might be easier to ask; what doesn’t Te Tiriti o Waitangi have to do with food?
may we all have enough to thrive - ka mākona
matariki - te tau hau māori
Behold Tupuānuku, of the fertile soil, spread your plenty across the land.
Reveal the bounty of Rongoā, Indeed!
We see and feel heartened by Tupuānuku, one of the nine Matariki stars connected to our kai and our rongoā that are grown in the soil or harvested from the ground. At this time we gently remind ourselves of, and reflect on, the importance of our soil and all the life forces it contains that contribute to our harvests, nurturing and producing our kai atua.
The power of local and community initiatives
Heria te taura tangata.
Weave the people.
Within our communities there lies remarkable potential—there is power in locals coming together to make transformative change. These pockets of individuals and local stakeholders have the ability to weave the people in their rohe, cultivating the relationships and spaces necessary to make behavioural and structural change.
realising food secure communities
He kai kei aku ringaringa.
There is food at the ends of my hands.
In Aotearoa, food prices are soaring, contributing to a cost-of-living crisis, while some of our most productive food producing regions are struggling to provide their staples, following the natural disasters we experienced earlier this year. This is just the latest in what has now been years of crisis response – which some are now calling a poly-crisis. Continuing to focus on fighting the fires is only going to get us so far.
response, recovery and realising a food secure aotearoa
Mā whero, mā pango ka oti ai te mahi.
With red and black the work will be complete.
This is a pivotal yet imaginative moment for Aotearoa, as we move from an immediate crisis response in the wake of pandemic and natural disasters towards longer-term recovery – there is the prospect of realising something better.
the importance of nutrition
He taonga te hauora.
Health is wealth.
Kore Hiakai Zero Hunger Collective has a vision of a healthy population where all people thrive and have access to enough nutritious food that not only nourishes our bodies but feeds our souls too.
Championing Te Rēo over the weeks of Mahuru Māori
Te Wiki o te Reo. 12-18 Mahuru 2022.
Whakanuia ō tātou toa reo Māori, e 50 tau ki muri nei.
Honouring our Māori language champions, 50 years on.
what is food security?
Me te wai korari.
Like the nectar of the flax flower.
At the heart of any community in Aotearoa you will find a strong sense of hospitality and compassion – manaakitanga and arohatanga. When mishaps happen with our neighbours we tend to reach out and offer what we have to uphold them during their time of need. We might make a meal or soup; drop in kai or share from our gardens; or sometimes donate to a foodbank. This has always been evident in our nationwide DNA and collective sense of identity, and it was especially evident through our responses to COVID 19.
the sowing machine
Mā mua ka kite a muri, mā muri ka ora a mua
Those who lead give sight to those who follow,
those who follow give life to those who lead
There is more than one way to cook a potato – and there is more than one way to create a food resilient community.
A small seed can sustain many
There is a whakatauki that speaks to kai production, ‘iti noa, he pito mata’, referring to a small uncooked portion of kumara replanted to produce many more.
In other words, with care, a small seed can sustain many people. From this whakatauki, we not only draw on the notion of potential from the seed – or kumara, but the fundamental interconnected relationship between our soils and people.
Mā te wā e hoa
Waiho i te toipoto kaua i te toiroa.
Let us keep close together not wide apart.
As summer fades and autumn arrives, here at Kore Hiakai we begin a new season as Wayne Paaka, our Pou Māori, moves on with his sights set on new horizons. While we say our goodbyes, and support Wayne as he transitions into his new role, we take this opportunity to mihi him, and to champion all he has done in our space for Kai sovereignty.