By LIAM DANN and agencies
Poor early spring weather that dampened dairy production has notched up another culinary victim.
Serious asparagus lovers will have noticed that the usual abundance of cheap produce has not emerged this season.
A combination of the cool weather and a shortage of labour to pick the crop has
conspired to make it a particularly difficult season for growers.
Canterbury asparagus grower and packhouse operator Peter Falloon said he had only half the number of pickers needed despite extensive advertising and appeals to Work and Income for help.
"We've had to mow some of the crop into the ground because we just can't harvest it.
"If it doesn't improve we could lose 50 per cent to 60 per cent."
So far only about five tonnes of asparagus has been harvested throughout the country - six tonnes less than normal for this time of year.
Cooler soil conditions in September and October put the harvest behind by two to three weeks.
The labour shortage is making it even harder to catch up.
Falloon said he had been forced to mow asparagus worth about $40,000 on the export market because of the shortage of workers.
He said he had to get someone else to do the mowing because he could not bear to do it himself.
While asparagus picking was reasonably hard work, growers were paying up to $19 an hour.
"It's not as if we are paying a pittance. I don't think it is hard work; Kiwis have got out of doing that kind of work."
He had eight pickers but needed 16 for his 20ha property, and had needed to send his packhouse workers home early because there was nothing for them to do.
The irony was that a series of typhoons in Japan meant New Zealand asparagus had been fetching top prices.
Falloon said the problems for the asparagus industry did not bode well for later crops.
"If we are having labour problems, cherry growers will have labour problems and apple growers will have labour problems later on. The whole country loses."
He blamed immigration policy for stifling the labour supply by blocking unskilled agricultural workers.
"The Government is providing no assistance at all."
