PRESIDENT’S WORD
AT LAST THERE ARE POSITIVES TO CELEBRATE Barry O’Neil : HortNZ president
I suggested the government had asked us to swallow a RAT last month. I should have been more careful about what I said because, as I write this, beside me is my positive RAT test! That said, some real positives have happened over the last little while. Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme worker numbers increasing to 16,000 is good, even though we would have liked this number to be 25,000, but at least it’s a start. And with Working Holiday Visas starting again in mid-March, we will hopefully begin to see a return of backpackers to the country, to address the 10,000 shortfall in seasonal workers. And good to see Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) being phased out, along with bringing forward the border opening dates for tourism to start to recover. And very good to see the changes the government has made to critical workers being able to continue to work, and for isolation periods to be reduced to seven days. It’s absolutely essential that we allow our healthy workers to work! I really commend the industry for its collaborative approach to the labour shortage, and the willingness to work as the horticulture sector to support each other. It’s a no brainer to me, and something we should continue to focus on in the future, rather than competing with each other internally.
2 NZGROWER : APRIL 2022
Another area for collaboration is how we go about attracting backpackers here, and making the campaign so appealing that they come to this side of the ditch. There’s a great opportunity to work together to make this happen. Harvest is beginning for our two biggest sectors, apples and kiwifruit, which is always something to celebrate. After a year of hard work to get the crop to its best possible state, there’s nothing like picking and seeing the truck leave the orchard taking the fruit to market. The fruit is looking fantastic this season and while we all have our fingers and toes crossed that we can get it all picked, packed and shipped, we are off to a great start.
With Working Holiday Visas starting again in mid-March, we will hopefully begin to see a return of backpackers to the country, to address the 10,000 shortfall in seasonal workers I really appreciate the efforts being made by many people to look after each other and our ’wellbeing.’ There are some really great initiatives.
I encourage everyone to make time to have a cuppa and catch up with others, which is a great way to keep an eye on each other.
And very important that we get our consumers supporting fantastic New Zealandgrown produce – this will ensure sustainable production into the future, which is at risk if cheaper, lesser quality produce floods our markets Country of Origin labelling has been a long time coming but it has arrived, with the regulations coming into effect and now, imported produce needs to be labelled as such. I congratulate all the people over the years that have been working hard for this outcome, even though there was some serious push-back from others in the primary sector, along with the government. With our compliance costs increasing as a result of labour, fuel, audits, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and so on, it’s important that our consumers are not duped into buying cheaper imported produce that doesn’t have the same production standards and costs.
