Cyclone Gabrielle: Gisborne kiwifruit growers still struggling a year on

In the worst-hit orchards, vines that looked healthy in early summer are either collapsing. Photo / RNZ / Susan Murray

RNZ

The destructive claws of Cyclone Gabrielle are still hammering Te Tairāwhiti kiwifruit growers a year after the event.

Vines that looked healthy in early summer are either completely collapsing, leaves are going yellow, or fruit is going soft and shrivelling on the vines.

A few growers are selling their lucrative gold licences and quitting the sector.

The local NZ Kiwifruit Growers representative and orchard owner Tim Tietjens has put a conservative estimate of a $1 million cost to the Tairāwhiti region.

Twenty or so of the region’s 50 orchardists appear affected to some extent.

The worst have lost everything, others are removing fruit prior to next month’s harvest to reduce vine stress, and per hectare tray production could be halved.

“So they’ve spent all the money, pruning, doing all the sprays, bees in for pollination, that sort of thing, and then the orchard’s just collapsed as the stress has come on. So yeah, a real hit,” he said.

Tietjens outlined the position for his business where 20 per cent of the orchard will need to be replanted, and a further 40 per cent will have about half the normal number of trays.

“I will be down to about six- or seven-thousand trays [per hectare] so I will be trying to nurse them through,” he said.

At that production level, his orchard will barely break even.

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He said growers knew vine stress could take time to appear, but this is a massive surprise and right up until Christmas he was cautiously optimistic with good fruit numbers and vines looking healthy.

“But I came back from a short summer break and [was] shocked at what I saw, how quickly things had gone south.

“Catching up with growers there’s a lot saying how they’re hating going out into the orchard at the moment.

“It’s depressing looking at a whole lot of sick plants, small fruit that’s not going to get harvested.

“So there’s concern around mental health for growers and that sort of thing.”

Tairāwhiti growers make up 10 per cent of New Zealand’s total production and for some, this is the third tough season in a row.

Tietjens said he knew of two growers who were getting out and from discussions he knew more were thinking about it.

“You can sell the gold licence separately to the land and so there are some older growers who are looking at a five-year project just to get back into production so they’re going ‘Hey maybe I’ll just sell the licence’.”

He said if they do that there is still land to put grapes on, or graze sheep, or get out altogether, “those conversations are going around at the moment”.

Tietjens said on the bright side, there was a ready solution with growers grafting on to the rootstock Bounty, which coped with wet feet and then dry conditions better than the older bruno rootstock, “so there is still hope”.

Grower group NZKGI chief executive Colin Bond said it was a similar story in Hawke’s Bay, Eastern Bay of Plenty, Coromandel, Northland and Pukekohe.

Bond said one needed to look behind the headline numbers and at an industry level there was a really exciting year with good yields and a fantastic-looking season.

“But you’ve got to feel sorry for growers who’ve had two tough years, which most in the industry did, but no one wants a third and unfortunately there are,” he said

Bond said it was too early to say what impact the issue would have on total kiwifruit production, forecast to be 193m trays for the 2024 harvest, but it was unlikely to be too significant.

- RNZ