She oozes passion for our food storytellers to lead the next generation of New Zealand's identity as a proud food-producing nation. But she says there is no time to rest on our laurels and we must come together around our proposed national food strategy, Mana Kai, for which she is on the steering group for.

 

"We have had the moral and environment high ground for so long. The push back that we are better than the rest of the world is really dangerous as other countries can frog-jump us with our complacency," Angela Clifford, Eat NZ.

This week's Change Maker is Angela Clifford, founder of Eat New Zealand, a non-profit organisation on a mission to be the bridge of the New Zealand food movement dedicated to connecting people to our land, through our food. 

 

Eat New NZ is a collective of chefs, producers, media, tourism, and event operators, who have all been inspired to create a national platform to promote and champion our best food, drink, and culinary tourism opportunities.

 

Sarah & Angela discuss opportunities to capture our national & indigenous values with our own form of geographical indicators, provenance & terroir. 

Angela, along with her wine-maker husband spent 15 years in the Barossa Valley, Australia deeply involved in the storytelling through wine events & farmer markets. When they returned home to North Canterbury, where Nick was involved in the establishment of Greystone Wines, Angela spread her wings to wrap the food of the region together with the wine involving chefs, tourism, and media.

 

Now in 2021, Eat New Zealand is holding the next installment of the Food Hui in Christchurch 1-2 November to discuss how we can incorporate a values-based framework or national food strategy into our food system, the development of food communities through local food networks, and regenerative food tourism to understand how they’ll play an important role in our food security and food celebration moving forwards.