REBECCA HARPER
Members of Hawke's Bay's Boysenberry Co-operative say country of origin labelling will give consumers the choice to buy locally grown products.
Faced with rising production costs, members are finding it difficult to make business stack up.
They believe their local, hand-picked boysenberries are of superior quality to machine-picked berries grown in
other regions. The catch is that hand picking costs more, but growers are not receiving a premium price to justify it. Canneries can import boysenberries cheaply, mainly from Chile.
Nearly every boysenberry product on supermarket shelves is labelled as made in New Zealand, but from both local and imported ingredients.
Haumoana growers Tony and Julie Maurenbrecher have 1.6ha of boysenberries and 0.2ha of raspberries, and are struggling to justify the cost of hand picking when they are not rewarded with a premium price.
"The problem is the whole market is dictated by supermarkets and they push the canneries for cheaper product," Mrs Maurenbrecher said.
She believed New Zealanders needed to be accountable and put their hands in their pockets to support local industries.
"People that come to our gate or the farmers' market don't worry about the price, they just love the product. But the bulk of our product goes to the canneries, and we can't convince them to pay us a high enough price to cover our costs.
"We were always told a hand-picked boysenberry is better than a machine-picked one. Country of origin labelling would give us the recognition in the supermarket and people can choose a locally grown, fresh product."
Apart from two growers in Whakatane, she believed the Hawke's Bay co-operative was the only one left in New Zealand that still used hand picking.
Mr Maurenbrecher, who was a director of the co-operative, said the price paid by canneries had not matched inflation. The co-operative used to have 25 members, but was now down to eight and rapidly shrinking, as growers were forced out of the industry. Rising costs included spraying, packaging, compliance costs, and the cost of land, which meant new players were reluctant to enter the industry. "Land is too expensive and some don't want to deal with the canneries - plus they just can't see a dollar in it at the moment," he said. Like most Hawke's Bay fruit sectors, boysenberry growers also added seasonal labour shortages to the list of problems. "Our product is better, but rising costs mean we just can't compete with cheaper imported products," he said.
