YOUR INDUSTRY
Erica and Bill Lynch could not have harvested their crop without RSE workers
Tasman faces challenge to get stellar apple crop harvested Tasman has a stellar apple crop of well coloured, good-sized fruit to harvest this season and the challenge will be getting it off the trees and onto ships. Anne Hardie Redwood Valley orchardists, Bill and Erica Lynch, say the region had a challenging start to the season with continually wet weather and they were spraying every five days to keep disease at bay. Then the weather cleared and they have had great growing conditions through to harvest, that produced good-sized fruit and plenty of it. “We’ve got the size and colour and normally you don’t get that together,” Erica says. By early autumn the region was getting a big temperature gap between night and day with no wind, providing perfect conditions for harvest. The Lynches have a small family orchard of just 40ha and heading into their harvest they were scrambling for workers to pick the fruit. In the past they have usually had about 15 overseas backpackers with Working Holiday 22
The ORCHARDIST : APRIL 2022
Visas, plus a handful of Kiwis. Most years they can borrow occasional staff from other orchards as different apple varieties allow, but this year everyone is short of pickers. Advertising through all the usual channels including Backpacker Board, PickNZ and roadside signage attracted only the equivalent 2.5 Kiwi workers. That was despite lifting bin rates considerably for pickers so that a reasonable Kiwi picker can now earn about $40 per hour (on average) and the Lynches also offer low-cost accommodation nearby. At the same time, they were desperately trying to secure Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme workers after being turned down the previous two years, and they say that is one of the challenges for small orchards. This year they were again declined but Immigration New Zealand told them they could share RSE workers
