As part of the “Gate to Plate” rationale of Agribusiness, the Year 12 class dined at Vault 21 to sample “Plates” of fine New Zealand produce.

Greg Piner is the Executive Chef and spoke about his diverse and dynamic role including sourcing the best local ingredients, liaising with food producers in New Zealand and overseas, planning new dishes, keeping up with food trends, and maintaining positive relationships with all parties involved, from the kitchen to the front of house. Greg also spoke about the “stories behind the food” which customers enjoyed hearing. He believes food should be shared in a memorable and fun way and recalled the special dishes his mum used to make. 

We experienced this first-hand during our “memorable and fun” lunch. The dishes were delicious – all the plates were left clean! Greg’s award-winning lime leaf infused sticky Silver Fern Farms Reserve short ribs: textures of mandarin, wasabi potato cake, crispy sea kelp, cashew and ginger slaw was particularly divine. The students asked Greg a series of questions which he answered using his quick wit and sense of humour. Greg is keen to maintain a close relationship with Kavanagh College and has offered his culinary skills for our class project next term … WATCH THIS SPACE! Interestingly, John Hollow’s freshwater crayfish will be showcased at Vault 21 on 7 July. We look forward to seeing the dish that is created with this mouth-watering ingredient.

After lunch, we headed to the Town Hall where we received a warm welcome to the SITE, Techniv8 Conference by DairyNZ. Each student was given a Conference pack which contained information about the various career opportunities within the NZ Dairy industry. We were invited into the Glenroy Auditorium to hear Ian Taylor speak about Innovation and Technology. He defined innovation simply as “doing something better today than we did yesterday” and spoke about the importance of Attitude and not waiting for people to tell you what to do. Other pearls of wisdom included: “you don’t know what you don’t know”; “don’t ever stop thinking about tomorrow”; “technology is nothing without the human spirit; and, lastly, “you’ve got to have dreams”. During his speech, Ian spoke directly to the students and encouraged them to believe in themselves and explained to them about the “No. 8 wire” concept that New Zealand innovators created and, still use today. Ian’s latest project is in Education teaching literacy and numeracy in prisons and also artificial intelligence technology to remove fear of MRI scans from children. Ian also spoke about his two sons and their application with innovation and technology (Ben and Sam attended Kavanagh College).

One of the Year 10 Economics classes joined in to hear the final speaker, Kaila Colbin (New Zealand Ambassador for Singularity University) who spoke about the exponential growth in technology and innovation. She stated what technologies are currently being used including, self-driving tractors, pruners, precision picking, robots and made the point that technologies are starting to converge. Her example was the exponential growth in biogenetic engineering, leading to huge opportunities within education, health and energy. She also noted the price/cost performance of LED lighting which is now cost-effective for indoor farming as it uses 40% less electricity. Kaila raised a few issues which farmers and food producers need to be aware of. One, in particular, was the increased cyber-risk because everything is connected. Another issue faced is the undermining of trust where malicious acts ‘deface’ technology – in other words, how to know what is real and what’s not. Also, the use of remote control technology from anywhere in the world has the potential to disrupt production.

A range of displays related to the dairy industry were set up in the Town Hall and we were able to gather useful information for class use.