Concept
In New Zealand, agriculture is the largest sector of the tradable economy. The country exported NZ12.653 billion (or 5.1%) of the national GDP in the 12 months to September 2020, and employed 143,000 people, 5.9% of New Zealand's workforce, as of the 2018 census. New Zealand is unique in being the only developed country to be totally exposed to the international markets since subsidies, tax concessions and price supports for the agricultural sector were removed in the 1980s. However, as of 2017, the New Zealand Government still provides state investment in infrastructure which supports agriculture. Pastoral farming is the major land use but there are increases in land area devoted to horticulture. New Zealand is a member of the Cairns Group, which is seeking to have free trade in agricultural goods. Following their settlement of New Zealand in the 13th century, the Māori people developed economic systems involving hunting, foraging, and agriculture. The Māori people valued land and especially horticulture, with many and various traditional Māori proverbs and legends emphasise the importance of gardening. European and American explorers, missionaries and settlers introduced new animals and plants from 1769, and mass European settlement and land transfer led in the second half of the 19th century to an agricultural system featuring large Australian-style pastoral runs raising sheep. Immigrant land-hunger, innovations in refrigeration in the 1880s and the rise of dairying fostered the land reforms of John McKenzie in the 1890s, permitting an agricultural landscape of smaller family-based farms which became New Zealand's 20th-century agricultural norm (the oft-repeated cliché trumpets that agriculture/farming/farmers constitute "the backbone of the [New Zealand] economy") - challenged only in recent years by the growth in large-scale commercial industrial agriculture and in lifestyle blocks.
