YOUR INDUSTRY
3,000 BINS OF KUMARA Words by Wendy Laurenson
Doug Nilsson grows kumara. Lots of kumara. This season he has harvested about 3,000 bins on the family property just west of Dargaville. “Growing kumara is an intense four-month season governed by weather restrictions at both the planting and harvest end, and is very dependent on available good labour. This year the quality is up but the quantity is down considerably industry wide because of the very dry summer.” Doug and his wife, Ann, grow kumara on about half of their 200ha property with the balance in sheep and beef, and when they first started growing kumara with Doug’s parents about 25 years ago, they were careful to choose a site that reduced the seasonal risks. “This place is flat and free draining with artesian water sitting under it, so once we got the drainage sorted, it has meant we have water to irrigate. Dad initially bought 70ha here, and Ann and I have gradually added to that by buying small uneconomic neighbouring dairy farms as they came on the market. We’ve now put roads over the whole place so it works seamlessly as one productive unit.” They’ve also increased the machinery fleet to five harvesters and over twenty tractors, and built massive storage sheds to house the kumara harvest. “Harvest is usually about eight weeks and we need five harvesters
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NZGROWER : AUGUST 2020
Doug Nilsson with this year’s kumara crop
to be sure we get the crop up before the winter rain makes the ground impassable,” Doug explains. “The dry season speeds up harvest because the dirt just falls off leaving clean easy-to-handle kumara, compared to the slow process of clearing mud clods off them. We can therefore run the tractors faster and get the job done quicker.” The biggest impacts of the dry growing season have been on yield (especially with the orange kumara) and kumara size.
The quality is well up but our yield is well down and the kumara are smaller. “We managed to irrigate our kumara with one travelling irrigator, but our system is inefficient and we can only water about 20% of our crop. We’ve spent a fortune putting sub-surface drains across the whole place that feed into peripheral big open drains, and this season has pointed up the need to better use that water for irrigation. We’re also looking at the viability of building a catchment dam.”
