Bombay-bound

MAN OF THE LAND: Dr Stuart Davis, technical director at LeaderBrand, inspects a paddock of broccoli at Makauri.

WHEN Dr Stuart Davis told me he was leaving Gisborne and heading for Bombay, I envisaged an exotic city in far away India and wondered why he was venturing all that way to grow vegetables.

However, the Bombay that Stuart was referring to is 20 kilometres south of Auckland.

Talking to him on the eve of his departure, the technical director at LeaderBrand said he was about to complete his second lap of the North Island.

Born in Pukekohe, Stuart is returning to live there after almost 40 years away, to take up the role of general manager of Sutherland Produce, a business 50 percent owned by LeaderBrand since 2013.

Sutherland Produce is a fourth generation family-based business that grows broccoli, lettuce and silver beet. Along with LeaderBrand, they are one of the largest green vegetable growing operations in New Zealand.

Having been at LeaderBrand in Gisborne for 14 years, Stuart is looking forward to a new challenge and says the job of general manager will be a good test of his all-round capability.

Stuart always had a strong interest in the land. He studied vegetable production at Massey University gaining a Bachelor in Horticultural Science (Hons) and a PhD there. His doctoral research involved seedling transplants, work that put him in contact with Gisborne tomato growers Cedric and Dean Witters and LeaderBand founder Murray McPhail who was also growing squash and sweet corn on the Poverty Bay Flats.

“The Gisborne group of growers really impressed me with how innovative and forward-thinking they were.”

Stuart came to Gisborne at the beginning of 1986 as a research agronomist for J. Wattie Canneries. After four years, he became agricultural manager for Wattie Frozen Foods, a role that involved the scheduling and harvesting of crops grown locally.

A job at head office in Auckland as agricultural operations manager for Wattie Frozen Foods was followed by managing crop procurement for Heinz Wattie’s New Zealand, based in Feilding. Then with the New Zealand operations rolled back into one and consolidated with Heinz Australia, Stuart looked after crop procurement for the whole of Australasia, based in Feilding and Hastings.

Time for a changeHe enjoyed the work but after 16 years with the one company, Stuart felt it was time for a change.

“Wattie’s had originally overseen the whole supply chain but as they diversified into outsourcing from co-packers it became less interesting to me,” he says.

“Murray McPhail’s operation, on the other hand, was just getting into food processing, the fresh salads were about to start up and they were developing the LeaderBrand brand which was all about controlling the product from seed to sales.

“That had a lot of appeal to me because it offered the opportunity to add value to the final product. An increase in yield or an improvement in quality could be tracked all the way to the point of sale.”

Stuart came to Gisborne as fresh crops business manager for LeaderBrand Produce in 2002, becoming general manager of operations in 2005 and technical director in 2011, one of eight senior managers.

As technical director, Stuart looked after a wide range of factors from fertiliser and agrichemicals to water supply, food safety and post-harvest storage.

He’s been involved in the retort processing factory which packages sweet corn and beetroot into vacuum-packed pouches.

In recent years, Stuart has done a lot of LeaderBrand’s liaison with Gisborne District Council (GDC).

Cyclone Bola“I was in Gisborne in 1988 during Cyclone Bola so that certainly raised my understanding of the importance of flood control.

“In 2009 I got involved in the steering committee for the Waipaoa River Flood Control Scheme and we managed to get a programme to strengthen the stop-banks included in the council’s 10-year plan.

“The council has committed to raising and thickening the stop-banks to withstand a one-in-100-year flood. Preliminary work is due to commence in the current year.

“Given the effects of global warming and forecasts that what were one-in-100-year floods are now more likely to be one-in-70-year events, we need the flood control scheme to be upgraded. The stop-banks were constructed after the 1948 flood, and led to much of the land development we see today. It would be foolish to let the scheme capacity deteriorate.”

Stuart has a thing about water. Since 2010 he has been a member of the GDC’s Fresh Water Advisory Group, charged with developing a fresh water plan.

“The catalyst for my involvement in the group was the developing discussion about environmental minimum flows.

“When reports showed that the Makauri aquifer was declining, the council was faced with the problem of having to tell people to restrict their water use.

“They are talking severe restrictions — a 60 percent reduction in current use by 2023.

“The options on the table were for Gisborne to revert to low-value crops that could be grown without irrigation, or find a solution to the water problem.

“Gisborne’s land is productive but the area is small and distant from markets so to succeed we need to focus on high-value crops on high-value land.

“When you are committed to supplying vegetables to the market every day of the week, reliability is an important factor. We can’t just stop supplying when there is no water. The fresh produce market is not like a processed product where stock can be built.

“So to maintain consistency and volume of supply, we need water. In the summer, the Waipaoa River is near fully utilised but in the winter it is not.

“Dams cost many millions to build and it’s hard to build them here due to the geology of the land.”

Replenishing depleted groundwater systemsLooking for a smart solution, Stuart sent himself on a groundwater course where he learned about aquifer recharge — replenishing depleted groundwater systems by pumping water back into the aquifer.

“Leading the course was a US hydrologist now working from Christchurch who had already carried out many successful projects like this elsewhere in the world.

“The Freshwater Advisory Group discussed the concept and encouraged GDC to do the research needed to apply for consent to take water from the Waipaoa when the flow is high, filter it and pump it down a bore into the aquifer.

“The technique will be trialled in winter 2017 and all the testing so far suggests it should work well.

“The process of aquifer decline could be allowed to continue for another decade or two but these projects take time to test and build. We’ve got to get started on arresting the decline in the aquifer before it becomes critical.”

In his Wattie’s era, Stuart was involved in integrated pest management programmes to combat such insects as tomato fruitworm and Argentine stem weevil. This continued in his time at LeaderBrand where he led the development of a national IPM programme for lettuce (following the arrival of the lettuce aphid in 2003). He also made a major contribution to a similar programme for vegetable brassicas.

The biosecurity challenges keep coming and in his role as a director of Vegetables NZ, Stuart has participated in a project which eradicated the great white butterfly in the Nelson area.

Most recently he has been involved in preparation for dealing with the possible arrival of the brown marmorated stink bug.

“This is a relative of the green vegetable bug and has become a big public nuisance in the United States as it gets all over houses and other buildings in large numbers as well as being a major pest of many crops.”

After 30 years, Stuart has mixed feelings about leaving Gisborne.

“It’s another chapter in my life, returning to where I grew up. My parents and siblings are still in Pukekohe so in many ways, it’s a homecoming.

“It will be a different growing environment. In Gisborne, we are very much flat land growers whereas Bombay is rolling country.

“It’s good for LeaderBrand to have a stake in other areas because the geographical spread helps mitigate risk and the operation is closer to the market than Gisborne. And it’s good for Sutherland because they gain access to LeaderBrand’s markets.

“Despite Pukekohe’s reputation for higher rainfall, it’s actually not much higher. We still have to irrigate there too so I will not escape the water issues,” he says.

Missing Gisborne's climateHe will miss Gisborne’s climate with its long periods of settled weather, being able to walk to town, and taking his lunch to the beach only two blocks from the office.

“I’ll also miss the community feel here. I’ve enjoyed working on community projects, finding practical solutions to problems — like the fresh water advisory group.

“People here tend to get together, roll their sleeves up and come up with good ideas.

“It’s what I enjoy most — working with other people and adding my skills to the mix to achieve something none of us could do as well individually.

“And I appreciate the interconnectedness in Gisborne — I enjoy being able to read a local newspaper every day to keep up with what’s going on.

“It’s the kind of New Zealand I feel lucky to have grown up in.”

Looking ahead, Stuart foresees greater consolidation in his industry.

“Growers are getting bigger and more vertically integrated, from raising their own plants to doing their own marketing. It’s a model LeaderBrand has made work very well and Sutherland also operates along those lines,” he says.

When he’s not working, Stuart enjoys going to concerts and the theatre, going bush and hanging out with his sons Simon and Michael aged 21 and 22.