Helping Eastern Bay Locals Reconnect With Their Kai

With fertile soil, a great climate and abundant fresh produce growing in orchards and gardens across the Eastern Bay of Plenty, why are so many people going hungry?

According to the latest New Zealand Health Survey, 27% of Kiwi kids now live in households where food sometimes or often runs out. But beyond our cost of living crisis and funding cuts to food banks and other social services, there’s another major reason why kai insecurity is so prevalent – many of us have lost the ability to grow and cook our own food, “and to even know what healthy food looks like,” says Nikki Harnett, the woman behind a new Eastern Bay initiative called Grow It Local.

In late 2024, Nikki wrote the Kai Security Sector Research Report for Whakatāne District Council. She surveyed the region’s front line social sector agencies who help people struggling to feed their families, to find out what the real issues are.

She found a fragmented local food network that would benefit from better coordination to bring people and services together. “Education is critical,” the report concluded. “There is a strong need for support in gardening, cooking, budgeting and nutrition.”

Nikki now leads Grow It Local to help build a strong, community-led, climate-positive food system across the Eastern Bay of Plenty. “We want everyone to have access to healthy, culturally meaningful kai, the skills to grow and prepare their own food, and a supportive local network that protects food sovereignty and the environment,” Nikki explains.

“I would love to see more backyards full of fresh produce, more publicly accessible fruit trees, and just a better local food economy. We can grow it. We don’t need to send food away to be trucked back again. Let’s set up some micro enterprises where people are growing particular things and adding value. Let’s have more farmers markets and let’s go direct to consumer to get better prices, and utilise the leftovers as best we can. Let’s reduce our waste, reduce our food miles and build a circular local food economy that really nourishes everybody and reconnects people with growing food.”

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Fundholding Service

Grow it Local is registered under The Gift Collective – an umbrella organisation that provides financial administration for charitable projects nationwide. This means all grants for Grow it Local are received by The Gift Trust and held in their bank accounts, making administration, funding applications and due diligence much easier.* BayTrust has recently granted $12,500 to Grow It Local which will now be administered by The Gift Trust to get operational activities underway.

“It’s just so exciting because I’ve been working on this project for over two years now, and it’s been very part-time,” Nikki says. “But having that financial support to actually dedicate more hours and be able to go out into the community and set things up properly is wonderful.”

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Upcoming Plans

“I’ve recently started working with a local kohanga reo and they’ve got kids who think food just comes from the supermarket. So we’re setting up a vegetable garden and composting system, supplying some fruit trees, and teaching them how to prune so the kids can see how food is grown, and their on-site cook can feed it to them.

“We’re also developing a local kai map for our website which shows all the places you can get kai – whether it’s your local food bank, roadside stalls, public fruit trees or pātaka kai (food sharing stalls).”

Connecting local growers and community gardens directly with consumers is another important piece of the puzzle. Nikki says some orchard crops go to waste because they’re not export standard or economical to pick – yet people are going hungry nearby.

“We’re setting up a database of growers to help develop a local food economy. We don’t want to try and reinvent the wheel. People are already doing amazing things. But if we can connect local growers with outlets for their produce… for example, we’ve got a lovely group of locals who make jams and put them in their pātaka kai to share. So if we can connect them with growers who have excess produce, then that’s awesome.”

Grow It Local also plans to run free educational workshops next year, teaching locals skills such as fruit tree pruning, composting, preserving and fermenting, along with possible tours of local food forests. Nikki says she’ll work with local schools, marae, community groups and individuals to support and bring people together to have a bigger impact.

“Eventually we will set up volunteering systems for food rescue and fruit picking of orchards and things like that, for people to get involved,” Nikki says. “We want to develop a holistic local food economy so help isn’t limited to just emergency support. We want to create a system where the whole community can benefit from having more nutritious local food available to them.”

* The Gift Collective has now administered $6 million in funding grants to almost 150 community groups doing charity work across New Zealand since its inception in 2000. Any other community groups who wish to work under this charitable fundholder model are welcome to visit https://giftcollective.nz/ for more information.

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