History

Under the premise of requiring grower control over an industry standard Quality Assurance Scheme, United Wheatgrowers (NZ) Ltd was instrumental in the establishment of the New Zealand Crop Quality Assurance (NZCQA) taskforce and scheme for the 1998 harvest year. The scheme developed required growers to complete a diary of inputs for every line of grain to be marketed. Included were inputs such as seed, its source and treatment, pesticides used, fertiliser used and in-store insecticide treatment. Following harvest, these diaries were presented to end-users, who scrutinised their content. Prior to delivery of grain any movements or drying process was notified to the end-user. Most flour millers, feed compounders and maltsters required the diaries to be used, as a contractual term. The 2000 and 2001 harvest years were subject to a random audit of around fifty growers in each year. This audit was promoted as an educational exercise.

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Following considerable industry consultation the NZCQA Task Force agreed to proceed with the establishment of a registration based QA system to operate for the 2004 harvest and onward.

The new system replaced the NZCQA diary system and was promoted on the following basis:

• Growers would be required to register with the scheme, agreeing to abide by the scheme rules.
• Growers would not be required to furnish existing NZCQA diaries to grain processors, but would be required to keep all relevant information on crop inputs & grain handling in a form that is ultimately auditable. For most growers this was unlikely to involve any change from their existing diary or computer based systems.
• For the first two seasons audits of grower information would take place, funded by industry participants.
• Further development of the new scheme would take place after the initial two seasons, ultimately providing for independent random audits at cost of growers.
• Grain processors would have access to the registration database to confirm individual grower registration.
• Some grain processors may have chosen to make the furnishing of further information a contractual obligation.

The NZCQA Taskforce urged all growers to support the industry initiative so that consumers may have ultimate confidence in locally produced grain. The new scheme would hopefully have satisfied the needs and concerns of all industry participants. Particularly, grower concerns over registration charges were allayed, by allowing two seasons registration free of charge.

Processors showed support by making registration a contractual obligation for the 2004 harvest. Significantly, the NZ Flour Millers Association resolved that members would only purchase grain from registered growers from the 2006 harvest.

Maize growers were invited to join the scheme because of obvious synergies. This decision was made in consultation with processors and the Maize Growers Subsection of Federated Farmers of New Zealand.

The taskforce developed the scheme rules package in conjunction with Asurequality.