Northland growers getting into the banana game with diverse varieties

There are more varieties of bananas than the kind we see in stores. Photo / RNZ

By Leonard Powell of RNZ

When buying bananas at the supermarket, you’ll see they come from countries such as Ecuador or the Philippines.

And you could be forgiven for thinking we can’t grow them in New Zealand.

But it turns out more and more Kiwis are getting into the banana game and there are way more varieties than the Cavendish kind we see in stores.

Ed Hayes and his wife have a plantation in Northland and are relatively new to the banana-growing scene.

Hayes told RNZ’s First Up he did not know many people in the area.

“Because we’re pretty new, we don’t know a lot of people up here, but whenever Kelly or myself are saying, ‘Oh yeah, we grow bananas’, they usually say ‘oh are you the guys out on State Highway 1′? and we go, ‘Yeah, that’s us’.”

The couple started Tippu Farm about two years ago and ran it alongside the other business ventures.

Hayes said the farm had 1100 plants at the moment, but they planned to expand to 1600.

“In this plantation we’ve got Misi Luki, which is a lady finger banana; we’ve got Dwarf Cavendish, we’ve got Hua Moa and we’ve got Goldfinger.”

Hayes said the bananas, though much smaller than the typical Cavendish variety sold in supermarkets, were full of flavour and character.

“With a supermarket banana, when they’re brown on the outside, typically the fruit on the inside is also brown.

“But really the the skin of these bananas is just a protectant.

“The fruit underneath it, the actual part that you eat, is typically really always good.

“So it could be blackened on the outside with pits on it and all sorts. And yet underneath the flesh will be perfect.”

Banana plants like the ones on Hayes’ farm typically take about 18 months before you can start harvesting and selling.

He said they dipped their toes into the market by going through a wholesaler.

“So he’ll come along, purchase our bananas and take them off to markets or he’ll sell them to the supermarkets like Farrow or something like that, or restaurants.

“And I don’t have a lot of time to do that myself and go on the weekends and everything.”

Hugh Rose has been running his plantation longer than Hayes.

“I couldn’t believe when I read somewhere that we were the largest consumers of bananas and I had actually successfully grown bananas amongst other things.”

“I could not believe that we’re importing 80 million kilos of bananas when they could be perfectly easily grown here and better-tasting ones than what we get usually from the shops.”

Rose was the founder and chairman of the Tropical Fruit Growers Association of New Zealand.

“All bananas are not created equal.”

He said it was difficult to say how many varieties of bananas existed.

“We could classify into a broad breakdown of plantain, which is a cooking banana, ladyfinger, the Cavendish, which is a thick-skinned one, but all bananas that we eat are hybridised and have been created by men.

“So yeah, there’s millions of them.”

He said he had 40-50 varieties at his plantation.

Northland was known for its farming and horticulture, with popular crops like avocado, kūmara, kiwifruit and citrus, but it is hard to put into words the diversity of fruit on display at his farm.

Rose had plants on his land that included mango trees, coffee beans, Himalayan strawberries and pineapples.

He told First Up his mantra was “poke and hope”.

– RNZ