YOUR INDUSTRY
WEATHER, LABOUR AND COST CONCERNS Glenys Christian Anthony says despite high local prices there was no backlash from consumers. “Those are the sort of prices we need to be getting in a good production year.“ Labour issues were also a big problem without the number of backpackers and Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme workers usually in the country over harvest time. “I heard of some growers who stopped harvesting some of their blocks because they couldn’t get pickers,“ he says. “They just had to leave some and walk away from them.“ Growers with strawberries in tunnel houses particularly relied on RSE workers and others on backpackers usually readily available during summer. Even those growers who usually employed labour from around their local area were concerned as to how they would cope.
The last season was a tough one for strawberry growers due to the weather which meant many finished picking earlier in the season than usual and exports were down. “It was very wet through the spring,“ Strawberry Growers New Zealand (SGNZ) chair, Anthony Rakich says. “There were four weeks in October when the rain didn’t let up.“ November brought hot weather, then more rain and after that it turned hot and dry for the whole summer period, which meant Botrytis rots were a big problem as affected fruit had to be graded out. While second grade fruit which is small or misshapen can still be sold, rotted fruit is left on the plants in the paddock. “Production was down but that meant prices were good,“ he says. The result was that many growers opted to finish exports to Asian countries such as Thailand and Taiwan earlier than they normally would. Higher freight costs due to the effects of Covid-19 on shipping also came into play. The export season would usually run from October until the end of January, but many growers stopped sending fruit offshore early in the new year as returns from selling on the local market were the same.
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“We hope the situation will ease for next year,“ he says. Another big problem is more recent and widespread cost increases. “The cost of everything is going up,“ Anthony says. “Costs are killing us.“ That includes fuel, packaging, growing media and for tunnel house growers, fumigation costs. Growers are already as efficient as they can be, changing systems if they could to reduce their production costs. More growers are opting for pick-your-own operations because of the shortage of labour, with a number putting aside some blocks when they ran short of pickers.
The cost of everything is going up ...costs are killing us “There’s good demand from the public,“ he says. “I get phone calls from November asking me if people can pick their own.“ Usually, he will leave one small block on his Danube Orchards, north-west of Auckland, for this purpose, but last season he stopped picking two weeks earlier than normal, turning a larger area over to the pick-your-own trade.
