Kai Anamata mō Aotearoa · National Conference 2026
What will it take to feed our future?
A three-day national gathering for anyone with a stake in the future of food in Aotearoa.
Why this conference
Food Security in a Changing World
Aotearoa is a nation shaped by food. It touches everything and everyone. We grow it, consume it, export it, and express identity and connection through it.
Kai connects people to whenua, culture, health, livelihood and one another.
The forces converging
The food systems of our mokopuna are being shaped today
Climate change, technological disruption, global insecurity, economic pressures, changing land use and biodiversity decline are each converging as the major challenges and opportunities of our time.
What it is
A three-day national gathering on the future of food
Kai Anamata mō Aotearoa is for anyone with a stake in the future of food in Aotearoa. Together, we will confront the choices ahead, bring different forms of knowledge into the same conversation and commit to collective action.
Participants will gain
A clearer view of the forces reshaping food in Aotearoa and around the world
New ideas, evidence and models they can apply to decisions being made now
Relationships that reach beyond their usual sector, discipline or community
First-hand experience of community place-based food innovation in Motueka
The shape of the programme
From global forces to collective action
Over three carefully curated days, the conference moves from global context to national choices, emerging research, practical innovation and action grounded in place.
Global forces to local choices
International contributors from Hawai‘i, Switzerland and Australia set the global context.
Emerging knowledge to practical innovation
Leading Aotearoa voices in food sovereignty, nutrition, economics, public health, land use, environmental science and food enterprise.
Conversation to collective action
Participants will encounter local work already restoring relationships, landscapes and livelihoods in Motueka.
Ngā kaikōrero
Meet our conference speakers
Speakers include Dr John Roche, Dr Jessica Hutchings, Professor Nick Roskruge, Moko Morris, Angela Clifford, Maury Leyland, Dr Fabian Wahl and other respected voices from Aotearoa and overseas.
Who belongs in the room
If your work affects the food system, or the food system affects your work -you belong in this conversation
Across the motu, people are already confronting these challenges. This conference weaves those threads together to connect, inform, align and amplify positive change.
Come ready to listen, challenge, connect and contribute.
Why Motueka
A place where lives and livelihoods have long been shaped by kai
For centuries, tangata whenua have cultivated these lands, cared for the waters that nourish them and shared their abundance with whānau, neighbours, visitors and people far beyond the region.
Today, Motueka sits at the heart of a renewed movement around kai - revitalising traditional knowledge, returning Indigenous crops to cultivation and bringing mātauranga Māori, science, research and enterprise together to develop more resilient ways of producing food.
Participants can encounter the work in place, meet the people leading it and contribute to its future direction.
Surrounded by fertile growing lands and close to the mountains, moana, golden beaches and native forests of Abel Tasman and Kahurangi National Parks, Motueka also offers an extraordinary visitor experience shaped by local produce, seafood, makers and a long tradition of manaakitanga.
Hosted by
Wakatū Incorporation and Te Āwhina Marae
This conference brings iwi, hapū, marae, science, enterprise, government and community together for a national conversation on food security in a changing world, to build on collective action and commitments.
06 — Registration
Secure your place.
Choose the registration that best suits you. Earlybird tickets are available for a limited time only.
Early bird
UNTIL 19th September 2026Government, business, universities & research
Students & community
Conference dinner
Wednesday 11 November 2026Join fellow delegates for an evening of connection, conversation and kai.
Register through Humanitix
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