YOUR INDUSTRY
ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT ALWAYS GOLD Words by Mike Nichols
A handful of growers across New Zealand are trying their hand at cultivating the highly prized, exotic red spice, saffron. Extracted from the flower Crocus sativus, it is one of the most expensive spices in the world, with a per gram value similar to that of gold. The cost is justified when you consider that it is harvested entirely by hand. Each individual saffron thread must be carefully removed from the flower, with each flower producing just three strands of the delicate red threads. More than 150 flowers are required to produce just a single gram of saffron. It is an Incredibly labour-intensive crop. For this reason, 90% of the world’s saffron is produced in Iran by peasant farmers.
Owner-operators of Kiwi Saffron, Jo and Steve Daley, are among the bold who decided to try their hand at growing saffron on a site in Te Anau. “Steve and I began growing saffron in 2013,” says Jo. “I wanted to order 500 corms to plant for home use, but Steve placed an order for 40,000 corms… that’s really how Kiwi Saffron Ltd was born.” Their farm has proved to be an ideal climate for growing the sought-after spice.
Harvesting occurs over a period of four to five weeks in autumn, when the corms begin to flower and grasslike leaves appear. In the spring, replacement corms are produced in the ground, just above the mother corm. On the surface, saffron would appear to be an ideal crop to grow in New Zealand – where distance from market and freight costs are major constraints – but in fact, our high labour costs and the intensive labour required means few operations opt to grow such a crop.
16 NZGROWER : DECEMBER 2021
Red gold - saffron holds a similar per gram value to gold
