From the President
At our recent Council meeting in early May it was reported that NZIAHS membership is now 397. This is the lowest it has been – 85 of those 397 members are retired and 36 are student members. Of the 85 retired members, 59 are complimentary – that is, they have served over 40 years as a member.
However, I must congratulate Lincoln University for recently encouraging some of its post-graduate students to join. May this initiative continue and spread to other research/academic organisations. The Institute works hard to profile and celebrate excellence and achievement in agricultural and horticultural science and to provide opportunities for our members and your staff to participate in and profile their work.
See the call for nominations for awards below
NZIAHS recently attended the Royal Society Te Apārangi Constituent Organisation Members Forum where we were represented by our Vice-President, Marty Faville. This was an opportunity to hear from the Society’s new chief executive, Justine Daw, who stressed the importance for the Society and its membership groups to work more closely together at this time of challenge, growing mis- and dis-information, and reducing levels of trust in the expert voice.
Indeed, this is a growing issue. I have just read a piece entitled “Misinformation infodemic? Why assessing evidence is so challenging” – see the link – https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2026/05/08/viewpoint-misinformation-infodemic-why-assessing-evidence-is-so-challenging/
This article points out that the word “misinformation” has become very common in media and popular discourse, sometimes for good reasons, because the lies that the word encapsulates can undermine democracy, impair health and fuel violence. However, the word “misinformation” is also loaded. There seems to be a growing tendency for people to apply the label to just about anything that they may disagree with, rather than genuine lies.
The article concludes – “The word “misinformation” should be reserved for genuine lies only, not conclusions decided by subjective thresholds, even if they are standard choices.
At the Constituent Organisation Forum, it was declared that in the latest Global Benchmark Survey (January 2025), New Zealand ranked 9th in the world for trust in science and experts. However, the ambition must be to sustain and deepen trust in the expert voice. As an example, currently in New Zealand some of the debate about the value of using gene technologies in the primary sector is challenging that trust in expert and learned views.
- Collectively the Consitutent Organisations impressed on the RSNZ that their members are constrained by
- Reduced funding, especially for the Humanities and Social Sciences;
- The challenge of navigating legislative and policy changes
- The need to keep science visible, relevant and exciti
- The difficulty in articulating the value of science when benefits are often long-term;
- The challenges with reaching out to key stakeholders (politicians and decision makers);
- Declining membership numbers;
- A lack of younger people coming through;
- Small organisational size; and
- Many parts of the system operating in silos despite being a small country.
So, will anything change? We can live in hope, but at least the issues have been shared and are visible. We can only hope that decision makers take note and do the right thing.
2026 NZIAHS Awards
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Jubilee Medal NZIAHS Fellow Emerging Scientist Award Postgraduate Award Grasslanz Knowledge & Technology Transfer Award
to recognise and reward achievement The full list of our awards can be found HERE.
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Dr John Caradus, HFNZIAHS
President
