Diversification smells of roses for Bob

THERE are Angus, Simmental, Coopworth, Iceberg, Dublin Bay and Midnight Blue growing on the Bob and Cath Matthews' farm a few kilometres south of Wanganui.
For those who aren't familiar with farm animals or rose varieties, Angus and Simmental are cows and Coopworths are a sheep breed. The rest are types of roses and it's this farming cocktail that makes the Matthews' farm unique.
The farm stocks a few hundred head of Angus and Simmental, about 1000 Coopworth sheep. In between, they crop about 400 acres of grain, including wheat, barley and maize.
But it's the rose nursery that provides about 75 per cent of the farm income.
Bob and Cath employ eight full-time staff on the property and all can turn their hand to most aspects of farm work.
The nursery was started by Bob's father, the late Tom Matthews, when he was demobbed at the end of the World War II and Bob and Cath took it over in 1978. From small beginnings, it has evolved into one of the biggest rose growers in the country, providing about 120,000 plants each year.
As well as acting as agents for many of the world's top rose breeders, the Matthews' have their own hybridising programme as well.
When Bob, 60, married Cath, he married into a farm of about 1000 acres.
And while it's hard yakka, retaining a sense of humour is a useful tonic.
Like when they first grew maize. The prices fluctuate. The year they got into it, they couldn't give the stuff away.
"We had a visit from the bank manager who told us grain growing was stuffed and if we stuck with it we'd be history," he said.
Pragmatic to the core, he and Cath thought about that for two days and then changed banks.
"It may not be any more viable but at least we're dealing with a bank with a good attitude."
Typical of farming folk, he remains the eternal optimist.
Growing roses means there is always something happening on the farm and holidays are a rare event. If one part of the farm operation has down time then the nursery will be going full throttle and vice versa.
"We employ eight full-time staff and most of them will do work in any aspect of the farm operation," Bob said.
At its peak, it was pumping out 300,000. But times and demand have brought changes.
"The rose industry in New Zealand is not dissimilar, but this is happening around the world too. I've got contacts world-wide and the numbers of breeders and growers is dwindling. It's the economics of the rose."
But he reckons the biggest are changing lifestyle and ethnic influences. Where Europeans will buy them, roses are not plants that attract large numbers of Maori, Pacific Islanders or Asians.
And there's what he calls the "China syndrome", driven by cheap imports. And Kiwis don't always want to pay premium prices for plants.
Matthews Nursery is still a large grower of roses but where there were once 30 to 40 nurseries there are now less than 10 and they are all smaller than they once were.
He and Cath did a little bit of exporting but, in the long run, it was not worth it. Then there are the over-arching issues of restrictions on importing and exporting bud wood to breed new varieties. Bob says the regulations continue to get tougher.
"They haven't stopped us from importing but they're not making it easier and probably limiting our economical viability if we continue doing it."
The only import-export the nursery does is with bud wood where it is grown in trials overseas for potential use in one country and he does the same thing at the Wanganui end.
But despite those challenges, he says roses remain a passion.
"They have to be otherwise you wouldn't be doing this. We'd like to think it's a nice profitable little business but it struggles," he said.
Late October through to December, they're busy hybridising and, now, they start assessing the various plant trials they've got going and that will carry on through to April.
"There's something like 2000 roses being trialled at any one time and we drop off the ones that aren't doing so well. The weak keep being dropped off and the strong go ahead."
More recently, the big push at Matthews Nursery has been creating virus-free roses.
"We don't spray pesticides or fungicides and deliberately do it that way. The plants come through. The bugs don't like the plants, neither does the fungus.
"Some of the plants look a bit ugly and may be all leaf and little flower. We're looking for the ones that are strong on flowers.
"It's really starting to kick in now and more and more of our plants released each year are bred chemical-free."
Close on 97 per cent of their modern varieties are "clean" in that regard and Bob said those free of the viruses had plenty more blooms.
The most popular rose remains Iceberg and it's the Matthews' biggest production number, but the couple drop some varieties each year that aren't doing well in the market.
They have about 300 varieties growing in the nursery.
As for family carrying on the next generation of rose growing, he said it was too early to tell.
"There's a passion involved that comes with a lifetime spent in the business but a lot of farmers are seeing fewer sons and daughters involved because it's a tough business.
"That said, I don't regret a minute of it."