We produce enough food for 40 million, so why are our supermarket shelves bare?

Despite producing enough food to feed 40 million people a year, the country is struggling with poor food security, experts say.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, shelves have been stripped bare, prices have risen to record highs and event after event seems to shut down the already struggling supermarket system.

This week supermarkets were battling to get food on shelves – with bread, produce and some dairy products missing on Monday.

A Countdown spokesperson said it experienced a number of delays with deliveries to stores last week due to road closures as a result of Cyclone Gabrielle.

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“But things should be looking better this week as roads start to reopen, and we can move products around the country more freely,” the spokesperson said.

Foodstuffs spokesperson Emma Wooster said if essential products were low at the end of the day it was likely to be due to a combination of shoppers buying more than they usually did and production or distribution difficulties.

While trucks were getting through to all stores but one, some were having to take the long way around, or drive slower because the roads were damaged, she said.

Emeritus professor of nutrition at Auckland University of Technology Elaine Rush said the World Health Organisation defined the four pillars of food security as consistent and sufficient availability; access to appropriate foods for a nutritious diet; use of food for nutritional wellbeing; and stable access to foods at all times.

Food security only existed when there was a reliable supply and people had access to healthy foods that are were affordable and safe, the organisation said.

In the early 1990s the Public Health Commission said in a report on the state of the country’s public health, that New Zealand’s food supply was more than adequate to provide enough nutritious and safe food for everyone.

But Rush said it was the first two pillars that the New Zealand food system was not able to provide at present.

But it was not the supermarkets’ fault, she said.

“The supermarket is at the end of a chain of events – from the farm to the shelf.

“It is not that the supermarkets cannot cope, it is that they cannot get the supply. Ideally New Zealand should be self-sufficient in food, but we do import a lot,” Rush said.

The country produces enough food to feed 40 million people a year and much of it is exported to other countries.

Only about 13% of the beef produced is sold domestically and export prices have been blamed for setting domestic red meat prices, with prices rising between 12% and 31% in the last decade, according to Stats NZ.

The cyclone disrupted transport and supply, which had a knock on effect to what consumers were able to buy at the supermarket.

Rush said there needed to be a national food plan and better storage of food supplies to be able to make it through further events without disruption to the food network.

“[There] needs to be a whole system response driven by the principle of feeding New Zealand people first and well,” she said.

Dr Sally Mackay and associate professor Lisa Te Morenga, both of the food expert group of Health Coalition Aotearoa, agreed.

”We have a food security problem in New Zealand – not just during emergencies like Cyclone Gabrielle, but all the time,” Mackay said.

The latest New Zealand Health Survey found that in 2021/22, 12.5% of children lived in households where food runs out often or sometimes, and one in10 children lived in households that used food grants often or sometimes.

“A national food sovereignty and nutrition strategy is urgently needed which addresses resilience in the food supply along the continuum of production to consumption in Aotearoa – including food security, transport, distribution and pricing,” Mackay said.

“The repeated disruptions to the food supply with Covid and Cyclone Gabrielle highlight rather than create the entrenched food inequities and food poverty which exist within and between many of our communities.”

Food prices jumped 11.3% last year, the biggest annual increase since April 1990, when food prices increased by 11.4%, which left some products, such as fresh produce, out of reach for lower income families.

Stuff has been collating the price of 21 grocery items including produce, meat and dairy at New World, Pak ‘n Save and Countdown stores in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch since August.

The data showed the price of the 21 items at New World Mt Roskill went from $126.88 in August to $139.06 in December, before dropping to $130.22 in January.

The price for the 21 items at Countdown Mt Roskill came to $124.65 in August and spiked at $142.68 in September. In December, it dropped to $134.42 and $135.18 in January.

Registered nutritionist Claire Turnbull said it was a difficult time for families, made harder by the challenge presented with the rising cost of food.

What a meal was had to be redefined beyond the standard meat and veg, she said.

Frozen vegetables and non-meat protein options such as dried lentils and canned beans were cheap alternatives that could help families weather the supply shortage and rising costs, Turnbull said.