NEOBIOME

OT_190: Millar & Bould (2015) — Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report: the only NZ whole-diet land coefficient…

Properties5
typesource
source_typeot
authorMillar S, Bould A
year2015
topicsfood_systems_agriculture, case_study, self_sufficiency_theory, nz_specific

11 min read

OT_190: Millar & Bould (2015) — Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report: the only NZ whole-diet land coefficient…

Source

https://web.archive.org/web/20160122233328/http://brct.org.nz/assets/BRCT-publications/Blueskin-and-Karitane-Food-System-Report-Final.pdf — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)

Millar & Bould (2015) — Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report

⭐⭐ The only NZ whole-diet land coefficient in existence — and the three defects that must never be separated from it

Ahika Consulting for the Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust · 179 pp · foodshed of ~2,800 people (Otago). Average NZ omnivore diet 826.1 kg/person/yr (veg 199.4 · dairy 117.2 · fruit 109.3 · beverages 92.6 · grains 90.9 · meat 66.0 · poultry 34.4 · fish 26.2 · eggs 9.3 · other 80.8). Land for full food self-sufficiency = 1,375.7 ha — “just 9%” of the foodshed’s 16,084 ha, or 16% of its pastoral land → ~0.49 ha/person, of which meat 0.287 + dairy 0.110 = 81%. 🔴 THREE DEFECTS — these must travel with the number. (1) The yields are not measured: Table 12 is “modified ecological footprint data taken from… (Lawton, 2012)”, and the report’s own measured meat yield is 165 kg/ha while Table 12 uses 230 kg/ha. (2) The dairy row does not reconcile: every other row equals (kg/person ÷ kg/ha) × 2,800 exactly, but dairy computes to 332.1 ha where the table prints 308.00. (3) Probable unit mismatch on dairy — a dairy-product weight demand applied against a milksolids yield; if so the dairy footprint (22% of the total) is materially overstated and 0.49 ha/person could be ~25% too high. ➜ Use 0.49 ha/person as a CROSS-CHECK, not a model input, until Lawton (2012) is retrieved (RT_395).

RT_395 resolved → LIT_100 (2026-07-24): Defect 1 provenance confirmed — Table 12’s 230 kg/ha meat yield is Lawton’s national mutton/goat yield of 231.50 kg/ha (Appendix 3 Table 6), and 165 kg/ha appears nowhere in Lawton. Defect 3 NOT resolved: Lawton reports dairy on a product-weight/liquid-milk basis (milk 9,960 kg/ha), not milk solids — so the suspected unit mismatch is not confirmed by the upstream and, if real, was introduced by OT_190’s own modification. Still a cross-check, not an input; this page stays contested: true.

Summary

A food system study of the Blueskin and Karitane foodshed north of Dunedin, prepared by Ahika Consulting for the Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust. It maps what a defined New Zealand community of roughly 2,800 people eats, what its land could produce, how much land full food self-sufficiency would require, and what the foodshed actually produces today — supplemented by a household survey of growing practice and a proposal for a community-financed dairy hub.

It is probably the most important NZ food-system source in the corpus, because it is the only document that carries a whole-diet land coefficient for a real New Zealand community. Every other land figure in corpus is either vegetable-only (LIT_022, CR_018), a design estimate (OT_018 200 m²/person), or a practitioner estimate (Interview VII [INT_007] ~3–8 ha for 20 people).

It is also the source with the most serious internal problems, all three of which were found by inspecting its own tables against its own measured data. contested: true is set accordingly. The honest position is that 0.49 ha/person is the right order of magnitude and the wrong precision, and that the correction is knowable — it requires Lawton (2012), the thesis its yields were modified from.

Key claims

- claim: "FOODSHED AND DIET BASIS: a foodshed of approximately 2,800 people. Average NZ omnivore diet 826.1 kg/person/yr, composed of vegetables 199.4, dairy 117.2, fruit 109.3, beverages 92.6, grains 90.9, meat 66.0, poultry 34.4, fish 26.2, eggs 9.3, other 80.8 kg/person/yr. [verified verbatim against the PDF]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015), Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report — diet composition table."
- claim: "LAND FOR FULL FOOD SELF-SUFFICIENCY = 1,375.7 ha, described verbatim as 'just 9%' of the foodshed's 16,084 ha, or 16% of its pastoral land. This gives approximately 0.49 ha/person, of which meat 0.287 + dairy 0.110 = 81%. [verified verbatim against the PDF; the per-person figures are the report's totals divided by its 2,800 population]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015), Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report — land requirement for food self-sufficiency (Table 12 and accompanying text)."
- claim: "CURRENT MASS BALANCE (production ÷ consumption) for the foodshed: four-legged meat 0.14, dairy 0.62, eggs 5.54, overall 1.26. ZERO commercial production of fruit, vegetables, grains or beverages. [verified verbatim against the PDF]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015), Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report — foodshed mass-balance results."
- claim: "MEASURED FOODSHED DAIRY: 5 farms, 532.5 ha, 4,295 L/cow/yr, 526.29 t milksolids. Model farm 182 ha = 152 ha platform + 30 ha runoff; Dunedin average 2.72 cows/ha. [verified verbatim against the PDF]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015), Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report — dairy sector description and model farm."
- claim: "HOUSEHOLD SURVEY: 65 m²/person of vegetable growing space on residential sections vs 25 m²/person on large lifestyle blocks. Verbatim: 'Not one household was completely self-sufficient in all of the food types'; only 8% were self-sufficient in two or more food types. [verified verbatim against the PDF]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015), Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report — household growing survey."
- claim: "COMMUNITY-FINANCED DAIRY HUB PROPOSAL: a Jersey herd selling unpasteurised milk, cream and yoghurt, capitalised by CUSTOMER ADVANCE PURCHASE. [verified verbatim against the PDF]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015), Blueskin & Karitane Food System Report — community dairy proposal."
- claim: "🔴 DEFECT 1 — THE YIELDS ARE NOT MEASURED. Table 12 is described verbatim as 'modified ecological footprint data taken from… (Lawton, 2012)'. The report's OWN measured meat yield is 165 kg/ha, while Table 12 uses 230 kg/ha. [verified at inspection of the PDF]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015) — Table 12 source note, compared against the report's own measured meat production figures."
- claim: "🔴 DEFECT 2 — THE DAIRY ROW DOES NOT RECONCILE. Every other row of the land table equals (kg/person ÷ kg/ha) × 2,800 exactly. The dairy row computes to 332.1 ha but the table prints 308.00. [verified by recomputing the table's own arithmetic]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015) — Table 12, dairy row, recomputed against the table's own method."
- claim: "🔴 DEFECT 3 — PROBABLE UNIT MISMATCH ON DAIRY: a dairy-PRODUCT weight demand (117.2 kg/person/yr) appears to be applied against a MILKSOLIDS yield. If so, the dairy footprint — 22% of the total — is materially overstated, and the 0.49 ha/person figure could be approximately 25% too high. [suspected unit error identified at verification; NOT confirmed against Lawton (2012), which was not retrieved]"
  source_location: "Millar & Bould (2015) — Table 12 dairy row, unit basis; resolution requires Lawton (2012) (RT_395)."

Neobiome Intelligence relevance

Feeds d02_smart_food_systems, i02_food_security_sustainable_agriculture and self_sufficiency_calculation as the only NZ whole-diet land coefficient — as a cross-check, not an input.

The coefficient and its composition:

Componentha/personShare
Meat0.28759%
Dairy0.11022% ⚠ probably overstated
Everything else~0.0919%
Total~0.49100%

🎯 The structural finding survives all three defects: 81% of a whole-diet land footprint is meat and dairy. Even if the dairy row is 25% wrong, meat alone is 59%. A community’s food land requirement is dominated by animal products, not by the vegetable garden — which is the opposite of where the corpus’s evidence has historically concentrated (veg yield, garden m²/person, irrigation). That reframing is the source’s most valuable contribution and it does not depend on the disputed arithmetic.

Three further findings that are model-relevant and defect-free:

  1. Full food self-sufficiency needs only 9% of the foodshed’s land (16% of its pastoral land). Land availability is not the binding constraint in a NZ rural community — a direct empirical counterpart to LIT_012’s Auroville finding that land availability alone does not deliver food self-sufficiency.
  2. The mass balance shows what a real NZ community actually produces: dairy 0.62, meat 0.14, eggs 5.54, and zero commercial production of fruit, vegetables, grains or beverages. A foodshed can be a net food exporter overall (1.26) while producing none of its own vegetables.
  3. The household survey is a rare measured NZ figure: 65 m²/person of vegetable space on residential sections against 25 m²/person on large lifestyle blocks — the counter-intuitive direction (smaller sections grow more per person) — plus “Not one household was completely self-sufficient in all of the food types” and only 8% self-sufficient in two or more. This triangulates well with OT_193’s derived ~49 m²/person.

⚠ The community-financed dairy hub proposal (a Jersey herd, unpasteurised milk/cream/yoghurt, capitalised by customer advance purchase) is a proposal, not an operating business. It is nonetheless the closest NZ analogue to the community dairy the model represents — and note that the raw-milk distribution it envisages runs directly into REG_031’s reg 64 constraint.

No engine cell is auto-changed by this ingest. Use 0.49 ha/person as a cross-check on the model’s land requirements, not as a model input, until Lawton (2012) is retrieved (RT_395).

Notes

  • contested: true, contradictions: now points to LIT_100 (was RT_395). The contradiction was internal to the source and its then-unretrieved upstream, Lawton (2012/2013); that upstream is now retrieved and ingested, which resolves Defect 1 (provenance) but not Defect 3 (dairy unit basis) — so the page stays contested, and the contradiction now names the ingested upstream rather than a retrieval target.
  • The three defects are of different kinds and should not be conflated. Defect 1 is a provenance problem (borrowed, modified yields, contradicted by the report’s own measurement). Defect 2 is an arithmetic problem (one row does not follow the table’s own method). Defect 3 is a units problem (product weight against milksolids). Only Defect 2 is certain from the document alone; Defect 1 is now confirmed and resolved by LIT_100 (Table 12’s 230 kg/ha = Lawton’s 231.50 kg/ha national mutton/goat yield); Defect 3 remained a suspicion and Lawton (2012/2013) does NOT confirm it — Lawton reports dairy on a product-weight/liquid-milk basis (milk 9,960 kg/ha), not milk solids — so Defect 3 stays open as an internal gap on this page (OT_190’s own Table 12 dairy-yield basis), not a further retrieval.
  • The 165 vs 230 kg/ha meat discrepancy is the sharpest single warning. The report measured 165 kg/ha in its own foodshed, then computed its land requirement using a borrowed 230 kg/ha — i.e. it assumed a 39% more productive system than it observed. That direction makes the land requirement too low, while Defect 3 makes it too high. The errors do not cancel in a knowable way.
  • Retrieval: the live brct.org.nz URL 404s. The copy held was recovered from the Internet Archive, 28 January 2026 snapshot, complete. Recorded here because the access route is fragile and may need repeating.
  • Vintage: 2015 report, built on 2012 data. Read the diet and land figures as a 2012–2015 picture.

Research targets

Documents to retrieve

  • RT_395 — RESOLVED → LIT_100. Lawton (2013, VUW PhD, DOI 10.26686/wgtn.17012801), the thesis whose “modified ecological footprint data” is Table 12’s actual yield source, is retrieved and ingested. Defect 1 (provenance) resolved: Table 12’s 230 kg/ha meat yield is Lawton’s national mutton/goat yield of 231.50 kg/ha (Appendix 3 Table 6); 165 kg/ha appears nowhere in Lawton. Defect 3 (dairy unit basis) NOT resolved: Lawton reports dairy on a product-weight/liquid-milk basis (milk 9,960 kg/ha), with no milk-solids conversion — so the suspected mismatch is unconfirmed and, if real, was introduced by OT_190’s own modification. It is now an open internal gap tracked on this page (needs OT_190’s own Table 12 dairy-yield figure + conversion note, not further retrieval), so 0.49 ha/person stays a cross-check, not a model input, and this page stays contested: true.

Research gaps

  • Not raised as RTs (recorded here instead):
    • A measured NZ whole-diet land coefficient. This report is the only candidate and it is partly modelled. There is no second NZ study to retrieve.
    • Whether the community dairy hub was ever built. It is a 2015 proposal; the corpus does not record an outcome. Relevant to the RT_387 dairy CapEx gap if it was.
    • The report’s own measured yields for crops other than meat. Defect 1 was established on meat (165 vs 230 kg/ha); whether the other Table 12 rows diverge similarly from the report’s own measurements was not checked.

Connections

Links to

Sources (7): CR_018 · LIT_012 · LIT_022 · LIT_100 · OT_018 · OT_193 · REG_031

Referenced by

Sources (6): LIT_100 · OT_191 · OT_192 · OT_193 · URL_029 · URL_030

SSI indicators (1): I02: Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture

EDT domains (1): D02: Smart Food Systems & Agriculture

Concepts (1): Self-Sufficiency Calculation Framework

Cases (1): Tui Community

Graph View

Backlinks