New Zealand has faced many crises. Few have inspired such quiet resolve as the campaign to save our most productive soils from houses.

For almost 200 years, we built cities on our best dirt. Panmure was once market gardens. So was Naenae. Each time gardens were ransacked by houses, the growers blissfully moved to the next paddock out, like a bow wave ahead of a boat.

Through it all, no amount of suburban wasteland stopped the vegetables flowing. Stubbornly, food prices have not outpaced inflation.

A less determined nation might have concluded there was no crisis. Not us. In 2019, fearing Pukekohe would vanish under houses, the Government proposed a National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land.

In the fight to save our soils, this policy would unleash the most powerful weapon in our national arsenal: the RMA.

Anyone wanting to build a house on highly productive land would face the wrath of their council planning department.

Treasury, ever the party-pooper, warned the policy had 'a weak problem definition and rationale for intervention'. Officials disagreed. Their recorded response: 'Noted, no change to paper'. Evidence would be sought later, through public consultation. Decide first, look second. It saves time.

Then came the cost-benefit analysis. It found that 'the long-term net costs outweigh the long-term net benefits'. Lesser policies would have died there.

The land use numbers were no more helpful. After 200 years of urban development, cities covered less than one percent of the country's land. Outdoor vegetables covered about 0.3 percent. The largest land uses remained native vegetation and sheep and beef farms.

Concerns about an impending shortage of vegetable-growing land lived on.

In 2025, the policy faced its toughest challenge yet. A new planning system promised to respect property rights. Alarmingly, this could have meant letting owners decide what their land is best used for, even if they chose houses or a solar farm.

The policy fought back. If the system must respect so-called property rights, why not redefine property rights?

The illustrative National Policy Direction for the new Planning Bill declared that protecting property rights meant that restrictions on the use of private land would only occur 'when necessary to ensure others are not unreasonably affected or to provide for important public values.'

Like magic, the policy lifted itself from the brink. So long as restrictions protected something the public valued, by definition it protected property rights.

Our most elite soils lived to fight another day.