Peanut planting underway on a Northland trial site.
Northland Inc and our partners embarked on a crop trial last year investigating the potential to grow subtropical crops such as pineapples, bananas and peanuts within the region.
With our warm climate and soil conditions, it was hoped that the trial would identify potential diversification opportunities and new revenue streams for
Northland's agriculture and farming communities.
Harvested in April, the peanut trial crops showed promising yields, with the initial harvest producing six to seven tonnes of peanuts per hectare, indicating - based on initial trial results - that peanut crops using high-yield Spanish cultivars could be grown successfully and with the potential to be profitable.
It was an exciting result for the peanut trials off the bat, especially when considering the initial trial focussed on one variant of peanut in limited test locations. It was obvious to the team involved that there was strong potential to increase the crop yields with the right conditions and soil types.
Establishing a peanut industry in Northland provides a range of benefits to our regional economy.
Job creation on and off farm to fulfil planting, harvesting and drying functions, means immediate benefit to our communities, and a chance to diversify and grow individual skillsets.
Peanuts are a restorative legume that fix nitrogen into soil, offering local farmers a new option to add to a rotation programme with other crops, while reducing the need to use synthetic fertilisers.
The chance for investment opportunities into the Northland region through peanut growing is huge, as we've seen through the collaborative funding efforts of our partners to date including the funding and support through commercial partners like Picot Productions who produce Pic's Peanut Butter, and government backing through the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund.
Looking beyond the immediate benefits for the region, the establishment of a peanut industry in Northland provides opportunities for our economy from the ground up, offering new hope and options to our farming and agriculture communities who, like all of Northland, have felt the effects of the uncertainty of the past two years, and feeding upwards into New Zealand's economic recovery from Covid-19.
With positive initial results from the first trial showing peanuts can successfully be grown in Northland and the potential benefits to our region made clear, a second trial is now under way within our region.
The new project aims to build upon the initial findings to determine whether it's financially viable to plant, harvest and process peanuts at scale within our region. While we know returns are possible from peanuts, we need to factor in the cost of the commercial equipment needed to harvest and dry the crops, so extensive economic modelling will be undertaken to determine whether the costs are worthwhile when producing peanuts at scale.
With seven sites selected across the Kaipara and Far North districts, the expansion of the trial offers a wider spread of our farming communities exposure to, and the chance to be involved in, diversification of their crops as we refine the locations which offer the most successful growing conditions.
The hope is that across the next two years of the study, we're able to provide Northland landowners, growers and farmers, as well as investors with the confidence they need to diversify into peanut growing.
Greg Hall is the project lead for the Northland Peanut Trials, Northland Inc.