A little over a year ago, this started with a conversation in a café.
A small group of friends were sitting around a table talking about MPI’s proposal to increase allowable glyphosate residue levels on food crops. It wasn’t a formal discussion—more a mix of disbelief and trying to make sense of what was being proposed.
The tone of it was something along the lines of:
“They wouldn’t do that… surely?”
And then, not long after:
“Someone should probably do something.”
And maybe more importantly—“More people need to know about this.”
That was the starting point. Nothing more structured than that.
What followed wasn’t planned. It just started to take shape.
From Conversation to Something More
Rather than leaving it there, that same group decided to look into it a bit further. That meant reading, researching, writing, and eventually building something that didn’t exist at the time—a place to put it all in one spot.
A website was put together. Social media accounts were set up. Articles started to take shape.
At that point, the aim was fairly simple: raise awareness and do whatever we could to either stop or influence the decision that was coming.
It’s worth saying this wasn’t happening in isolation. There were other groups and organisations already active in this space, running petitions, sharing information, and trying to bring attention to the proposal in their own ways. This just became one more contribution to that wider effort.
One thing we did do deliberately was keep our focus quite narrow. Rather than trying to cover everything, we stayed with one issue—glyphosate. With so many different pesticides in use across New Zealand, it would have been easy to spread too wide. Instead, we chose to follow one through and see where it led.
What We Found Looking Into Glyphosate Use in New Zealand
As we started digging into the topic, things became less straightforward.
As we started digging, it became clear there’s no shortage of research looking at glyphosate-based weedkillers and their potential effects. At the same time, there is also a wide range of views on how that research is interpreted, applied, or in some cases, dismissed. Trying to make sense of that landscape turned out to be more complex than expected.
What stood out just as much, though, was how differently people understood the issue.
In some cases, there was a high level of trust in existing systems and regulations. In others, there was uncertainty, or simply not much awareness at all. A lot of people we spoke to had only a loose sense of how glyphosate is used, or how exposure might occur in everyday settings.
That extended to practical use as well. It wasn’t uncommon to come across people using products like Roundup without protective gear, sometimes in ways that didn’t quite match the idea of “safe use” as it’s often described. Not necessarily out of negligence, but because that’s how it has been normalised over time.
When the Glyphosate Proposal Didn’t Feel Like the End
At the beginning, this felt like something tied to a specific decision. There was a proposal, a submission period, and an outcome pending.
But as the process unfolded, it became clear that the proposal itself was only one part of a much bigger picture.
When the decision came back in late October, and the proposed increases didn’t go ahead as originally planned (aside from dry peas), that could have been the natural point to step away. In a lot of cases, that’s where things would end.
But by that stage, there were already too many open questions to leave it there.
From a Single Proposal to Broader Questions
What followed wasn’t a clear next step, but more of a gradual shift in direction.
The focus moved from responding to a single proposal to trying to understand the broader system behind it—how decisions are made, what information sits underneath them, and how much of that is actually visible.
That’s where the OIA and LGOIMA requests began. One request led to another, and over time it built into something more than originally intended. More than 100 requests were submitted across councils and agencies. It wasn’t about challenging for the sake of it, but about asking questions in a way that creates a record.
Around the same time, another question kept coming up. It’s one thing to talk about residue levels in theory, but what does that look like in practice? What is actually present in the products people are buying?
That question led into testing.
What Testing Started to Show
Testing brought a different kind of perspective.
Instead of working with assumptions or models, it became about looking at real products—bread, honey, cereals—taken from supermarket shelves and analysed under lab conditions. The results didn’t always line up neatly with expectations, and in some cases, similar products produced noticeably different outcomes.
That didn’t provide clear answers, but it did highlight something important. The issue isn’t always as simple as whether something is present or not. There are layers to it—variability, context, and questions that don’t always have immediate explanations.
Looking Back on the Past Year
From the outside, this past year might look like a series of articles or updates. Behind that, it has been more of an ongoing process—asking questions, following leads, waiting on responses, and adjusting direction as new information comes in.
It has also grown in ways that weren’t expected at the start. What began with no audience has gradually reached a wider group of people choosing to follow along, ask questions, and in some cases support the work being done. That wasn’t part of the original plan, but it has become part of how this continues.
Where This Leaves Things
Twelve months on, there isn’t a clear conclusion to draw.
If anything, the scope has widened. What started as a response to a single proposal has become something more ongoing—an attempt to better understand a system that isn’t always easy to see from the outside.
The questions haven’t gone away. Some have been answered, others have led somewhere new.
For now, the direction seems to be the same as it was at the beginning—keep asking, keep looking, and see where it leads.
This is no longer just about a proposal. It’s about understanding something most of us assumed was already understood.
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Image Source & Attribution
We created the feature image on this page in Canva.
