Picked pineapples await sale at the markets. Photo / Geneva Fruits
Jodi Bryant visits the country’s only commercial pineapple farm, right here in Northland.
Owen Schafli reaches the top of the 6.8ha he was just expertly navigated, closely heeled by Bella the golden retriever, and surveys the tropical oasis before him.
“It’s all glory to the Lord,” he replies when asked how he feels about former scraggly clay and gorse scrub-entangled land he has tamed, sculpted and cultivated by hand to produce the country’s first commercial pineapple farm.
Schafli is a humble man, as anyone who knows him will confirm. He probably never even said, “I told you so”, to all the nay-sayers who mirthfully pooh-poohed his plans to start a tropical fruit farm in Northland.
Not that there was a need: the results speak for themselves. Most Saturdays, Schafli and his wife Linda, of Geneva Fruits, can be found at the Whangārei Growers’ Markets where their home-grown pineapples and bananas often sell out by 7.30am.
Such is popularity and demand, consumers travel from as far as Gisborne and Napier to buy their gourmet pineapples and the Schaflis often receive requests to courier their fruit down country, which they have to decline as demand outweighs supply.
Since arriving in Whangārei in 2011, Schafli fast gained a reputation and respect for his green thumb and has gladly shared his knowledge with local growers. Hailing from a long line of farmers, in his native South Africa is where it began. The name Geneva Fruits, however, derives from Schafli’s Swiss heritage, after his ancestors arrived in South Africa in 1878.
With family in Cambridge, the couple and their sons based themselves in Hamilton for several years after migrating and Schafli, a farmer at heart, continued growing whatever he could on their 700sq m property and on consenting neighbouring properties.
Then, in 2011, he spotted the ad for the 6.8ha of rugged gorse, scrub and covenanted bush at Parua Bay, which warned “not for the faint-hearted”. Rather than be deterred, Schafli saw it as a challenge. On the land was a half-finished rundown house with no power or plumbing, which was the first mission to tackle.
Then he began working the land which, as he did in South Africa both for agility and to be closer to nature, Schafli does barefoot. With almost no machinery, he rotavated the soil by hand and the family gradually transformed the rugged terrain.
After initially planting several banana varieties, they realised there wasn’t enough plantable land for them to be commercially viable. Having grown Queen pineapples in South Africa, Schafli obtained this variety and trialled them in mounds while using the sloping land to cater for the fruit’s dislike of wet feet, thereby avoiding root rot. When this proved a success, he started removing the suckers off the fast-multiplying plants to build up plant numbers.
“I realised back in South Africa there were some cold areas where pineapples did really well, so they can endure frost,” Schafli explains. “They’re part of the bromeliad family, which can do well here in Whangārei, so we thought, ‘Well, let’s do it’.”
At first, Linda, a teacher, taught locally to support their income, but had to stop when she was diagnosed with cancer so son Colin came home to help. It turned out their strengths complimented each other with 66-year-old Owen working the land, Linda carrying out admin and Colin taking on the IT and management while also studying horticulture and helping with the labour.
In its first flowering cycle, a pineapple will sprout a bud from which up to 200 small flowers bloom and eventually fuse to become the fruit. It can take around three years from planting to harvesting the first single pineapple. However, while the fruit develops, the plant sprouts suckers in the leaves beneath, which will themselves bear fruit after the first pineapple is harvested.
Schafli’s method involves regularly stripping the original plants of their suckers and replanting them in rows, where they produce their own fruit and, with larger suckers, the process time is halved. Plants can also be grown from pineapple tops but this takes longer. Despite their prickly leaves, pineapples are reasonably easy to harvest and handle and they have a good shelf life.
Pineapples like warmth, protection from frost and rich, free-draining soil and Schafli developed unique systems to ensure his crops survived. He planted sugarcane shelterbelts, which grew quickly and provided a form of natural greenhouse, insulating the pineapples from the chill. Pineapples are a dry-land crop, and the Northland rainfall has been enough that the Schaflis have not needed to irrigate.
The pineapples debuted at the Whangarei Growers’ Markets in 2019 and were a hit. Last year, they featured on TVNZ’s Country Calendar and their popularity soared. With their pineapples flying from the boxes, at $5 for a small, $8 medium or two for $15, and $10 for a large, they’ve limited them to six per person.
The difference between Geneva Fruits’ pineapples and those of the larger overseas growers is that when the commercial growers’ pineapples reach a certain size, they are sprayed with a hormone, which induces co-ordinated flowering and harvest times, and are picked unripe then gas-ripened for fresh fruit export.
The Schaflis’ spray-free pineapples fruit throughout the year. The Queen is a smaller variety that is super-sweet and a deep golden yellow inside and out. The core is edible and it’s grown more for fresh fruit, rather than canning. The Queen variety has a better tolerance for cold, disease and stress than Cayenne, the main pineapple variety imported here. Cayenne is a major commercial pineapple variety worldwide and is well-suited for large-scale harvesting and processing because the big fruit fits the cans with little waste.
“We chose Queen to give New Zealanders the option of a super-sweet locally grown pineapple that is spray-free and available nearly year-round.”
This draws consumers from far and wide. Another incentive is that it is possible, particularly in Northland, to grow a pineapple plant from the crown – the spiky leaves at the top of the pineapple – which can be replanted. These are removed from imported pineapples due to a biosecurity concern that exotic seeds could be concealed within the leaves. However, the Schaflis’ pineapples have the crowns intact.
They have now planted 40,000 plants - 500,000 including the suckers - and, at peak, are harvesting 700 a week. With limited land, they are hoping for a buyer of 10,000 pineapple pups to expand the enterprise and keep up with demand.
“I’d like to see more supplying directly to the public, if possible, and consumer co-ops, cutting out the middle man altogether,” Schafli says. “By selling loads of suckers, at least we can get the industry moving.”
Other options include leasing more land or selling the plants in bulk from a nursery.
The family recently formed a new company called Geneva Fruits Limited to accelerate the pineapple industry in New Zealand, and advertise bulk sales of pineapple plants on their Facebook page.
Schafli was also behind the formation of the Tropical Fruit Grower of New Zealand Association, along with his former neighbour and beef farmer Hugh Rose.
The two met in 2015 when, impressed with Schafli’s banana crop, Rose approached him for advice with his own, which he was growing as cattle feed. Within a week, he had a hundred plants and, in exchange for the banana guidance, Rose offered the use of his tractor. The two became firm friends and subsequently formed the now flourishing support group.
Inspired to go fulltime into fruit growing, Rose and wife Pauline eventually moved to a larger property, where they’ve become renowned tropical fruit experts in their own right and they continue to support each other, with Rose wholesaling the pineapple suckers.
The pair believe tropical fruit is fast becoming a worthwhile enterprise for Northland with an equally fast-growing demand. Banana plants have the added benefit of providing effluent mitigation, along with stock feed on farms. On the side, Schafli also grows and experiments with papaya, cherimoya, prickly pears, passionfruit, dragon fruit and coffee. And the family aim to have no waste with Linda brewing up kombucha and making dried fruit with the seconds.
The family trio still run the business between themselves today and Schafli concedes it’s been a long labour of love, not suitable for anyone looking to make a quick profit.
“It’s been quite the process.”
But as Linda Schafli says, “We’ve been adopted in and we really appreciate that so we want to give back to the country.”
And Northlanders are the lucky ones of this reciprocal gratitude with the genial Schaflis now well-established and welcomed Northlanders. Meanwhile, the ever-humble Owen, whose day begins at 6am and ends at sundown, continues, tirelessly and barefoot, to work the land he’s grown to love and call home.
How to grow a pineapple at home
1. Remove the crown from a pineapple by cutting or twisting it off.
2. Dry out the crown for several days in a warm sunny area to remove excess moisture.
3. Place the crown in a glass of water or container so that the base is submerged. Leave in full sunlight. Within a few days, roots will have emerged from the bottom of the crown.
4. When the roots are a few centimetres long, replant the crown into a large pot with soil.
5. Move into full sun, water when the soil is dry and try to cover the pot or move it inside during cold spells. Replant in a bigger pot when necessary.
6. Wait. Growing pineapples is not a hasty endeavour, and it will take one to three years for your pineapple to produce a single flower and fruit.
Both kiwi, a male and female, were wild-hatched.