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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Vegetable growers feel the pressure
  • Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:54:48 -0600


industrial agriculture is failing - surprise?

Vegetable growers feel the pressure
By HELEN MURDOCH - The Press | Friday, 20 June 2008
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4590940a3600.html


Gone are the days of Tasman's traditional family market gardener.

They have followed the national trend and been replaced by commercial
growers, the sweep of whose clean tilled paddocks and neat rows of vegetables
covering hundreds of hectares are manicured by giant tractors.

But even the rationalised grower is under threat from today's soaring labour,
fertiliser, land and fuel costs, coupled with almost stagnant retail-chain
returns. The outcome could soon be higher vegetable prices for consumers.

HortNZ senior business manager Ken Robertson said the loss of Tasman's
tobacco industry, many growers of which produced vegetables, the withdrawal
of Talley's from local vegetable processing and the development of
supermarkets saw a downturn in production and the rationalisation of the
region's commercial produce growers.

But recent massive increases in fertiliser, fuel and labour were now putting
even large growers under pressure. Robertson said commercial-grower returns
had not changed in the last decade and some had even gone down.

"Some are finding it very hard to make ends meet and I suspect banks are
looking at some parts of horticulture very closely," Robertson said.

Climate change and the proposed emissions-trading scheme could effectively
spell the end for many commercial growers, he said. "It will impose huge
costs on the industry, because they are big users of diesel in the
cultivation of crops and transport to markets. And basically the Government
has ignored the fact that growers cannot pass these costs on because they are
selling to retailers."

Retailers', and consumers', expectations of year-round supplies of perfect
cheap fruit and vegetables had done nothing to ease the industry's increasing
financial crises, he said.

He predicted these increased pressures would see the last of the smaller
growers soon completely disappear, and some larger growers reassess their
future.

Robertson said the national grower population was getting older and, apart
from the big specialty businesses, many were starting to wonder where the
future of the industry was going.

"If the situation in the marketplace does not change, consumers will start to
see some real price rises in fruit and vegetables," he said.

One of Tasman's largest fresh-vegetable growers is John Ewers, at Appleby.

His outdoor green-leaf vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage,
and glasshouse tomatoes and capsicum, end up on dinner plates around much of
New Zealand. With 8.4ha of state-of-the-art glasshouses, 100ha of fresh
outdoor vegetables and 115 full-time staff, he is constantly on the go
running a non-stop operation that is always changing.

The son of Nelson hop growers, Ewers has always been a vegetable grower. With
its benign climate and fertile Waimea Plains, Nelson is increasingly being
recognised as a good place to grow produce in the South Island, he said.

However, as in many areas, the future security of an irrigation supply was
the big issue, with urban and business growth putting increasing pressure on
the already over-allocated Waimea aquifers and river systems.

And increasingly the cost of business is cutting into slim margins.

Fertiliser has gone up 90 per cent and the cost of transporting produce out
of Nelson was now massive, he said.

However, he always has an eye to the future. From November, Ewers, who has
focused largely on the South Island market for the last two years, will
return to exporting tomatoes and capsicum produced in his expanding field of
glasshouses.

He also uses biological insect control in his glasshouses and very few
chemicals. He is trialing a new high-antioxidant variety of tomato and
recognises that buyers want their product presented in a variety of easy-pack
forms. "Gone are the days of the loose tomatoes," he said.

Despite the increasing pressures on the industry, Ewers said it has a strong
future, because good-quality produce was always sought after in the right
market.





  • [Livingontheland] Vegetable growers feel the pressure, Tradingpost, 06/23/2008

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