October 12, 2025

NZ launches grain trademark for homegrown grain

grain
Photo Source: Pexels.com

A new certification mark has been launched to celebrate and promote the work of New Zealand’s arable farmers. The Foundation for Arable Research (FAR), in partnership with Eat New Zealand, has published the “Grain Mark”, a trademark designed to help shoppers recognise food products made exclusively from locally grown grains.

Announced at Eat New Zealand’s national hui in Auckland this week, the mark will appear on qualifying products such as breads, rolled oats, and plant-based milks. The logo is a white combine harvester — signalling that all the wheat, oats, barley or maize in the product were grown in New Zealand.

FAR general manager Ivan Lawrie said the new trademark will help consumers make informed choices about where their food comes from. “What we want to do is create consumer awareness by the recognition of the trademark,” he said.

“Some of the products often say made from local and imported ingredients, but it doesn’t really give you much more information than that. It may say, ‘proudly made in New Zealand’, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you what the origin of the ingredients are.”

Lawrie said the country’s grain growers have faced rising competition from imported grain, particularly from Australia. “The arable farming sector has been doing it tough for some time. The competition that we face from imported product has increased over time.”

New Zealand grows around 100,000 tonnes of milling wheat each year, mostly in Canterbury, yet about three-quarters of bread sold nationally is made from imported grain. Less than a quarter of domestic grain production goes toward human food; the rest is used for animal feed and dairy.

Angela Clifford, chief executive of Eat New Zealand, said the Grain Mark adds a layer of transparency for consumers. “That’s informing and creating a line of transparency with New Zealand eaters to ensure they know that it’s their farmers that have produced the food that they’re eating,” she said.

Twelve organisations had products meeting the certification standards at the launch. FAR will oversee licensing through its QAgrainz quality assurance and traceability programme.

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