Milk & Money - Feed and Fertiliser

We have a wicked problem: we now have too many people on the planet to do things the old-fashioned way. New Zealand has a role to continue to produce high quality food and export that to the world.

– Ballance Agri-Nutrients executive Mark Wynne on New Zealand's role in the global marketplace

If you care about the natural environment, whether its climate change, whether it's biodiversity, whether it's rivers and lakes, you always end up back at agribusiness, which is driving the crisis...

– Greenpeace's Russel Norman on New Zealand's biggest exporters, at the start of this episode

We're not some massively evil group of people destroying New Zealand...cause we're not. Have we got room for improvement — of course we have. We can't just change the entire farming practices of all New Zealanders immediately...

– Waikato farmer Jason Trower on how he feels New Zealanders view dairy farming, near the end of this episode

...there's been lots of books written about this sort of thing, and a subset of New Zealand society reads them and has discussions in their own little bubbles — but we needed something that could reach a broader audience, and I thought a documentary was the way to do that.

– Journalist Baz Macdonald on why Milk & Money was worth making, Radio New Zealand show Mediawatch, 8 August 2021

As a former producer of ag-chems, fertilisers mainly of course, it does concern me that maybe I've contributed to some of the degradation that's becoming obvious, so it would be nice to be part of the recovery process as well.

– Independent fertiliser consultant Stan Winter on his past and present roles

It’s a difficult conversation, but a vitally important one for the continued health and happiness of our country and people. Our hope is that this series can help get us all on the same page, with at least a shared baseline understanding of how the industry operates, what the issues are, and what the barriers are to fixing them. Perhaps then we can work together to create a more sustainable and equitable Aotearoa.

– Baz Macdonald writes about why Milk & Money was made, in his first backgrounder

Watching all this over six parts, you do wonder why such a significant, sensitive and long-running issue has not been documented by a series of this scale before.

– Journalist and media analyst Colin Peacock on Radio New Zealand show Mediawatch, 8 August 2021

I’ve seen so many times urbanites try and have conversations with the rural sector, and the response is like "you don’t know enough about my industry to comment on it — like you don't know how it operates, you don't what the actual issues are, where they come from, and what the barriers are to fixing them."... we wanted to create a resource that everyday New Zealanders could watch, and at least have a baseline understanding...

– Baz Macdonald on Milk & Money, on Radio New Zealand show Mediawatch, 8 August 2021