increase font size
Truffles can fetch between $2,500 and $3,500 per kilogram.
Could previously unproductive land be used to produce truffles?
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) seems to think so. It’s providing more than $155,000 in Government funding from MPI’s Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures (SFF Futures) fund to Ohiwa Black Diamond Truffles, a Bay of Plenty-based truffle growing company.
Ohiwa-based couple Matiu Hudson and Annette Munday run the business and will use the funding to share their knowledge with interested growers so New Zealand can grow enough truffles for a robust export industry.
MPI director of investment programmes Steve Penno told Hort News the programme with Ohiwa Black Diamond Truffles meets the SFF Futures fund’s aims of supporting innovation in the food and fibre sector to grow productivity, profitability, sustainability, and jobs.
“It aims to boost capability within the truffle sector, to grow both productivity and profitability,” Penno says.
He adds that as well as growing truffles, the programme aims to develop new food products applying the health benefits of the truffle, with traditional Maori Rongoa (medicinal use of plants) for the hospitality sector.
“Workshops will be held for Māori landowners to grow and sell their own truffles, and the project will also explore export markets.”
This, Penno claims, will grow the industry and therefore create jobs.
Ohiwa-Black Diamond Truffles owner Annette Munday says they have already received orders for approximately 10,000 inoculated truffle seedlings and have helped one family in Kawhia set up a truffiere (truffle farm).
“We’d like to see Māori land trusts and farmers around New Zealand growing truffles on unproductive land,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to make money out of land with poor soil and could offer a side-line income for farmers if they planted seedlings beside trees used for riparian planting, for example.”
Truffles can fetch between $2,500 and $3,500 per kilogram, and set-up costs per hectare for growing truffles range between $35,000 and $70,000.
Munday says each tree is capable of yielding 200 grams to one kilogram in well managed plantations.
Winter grazing is looming again and the Ministry for Primary Industries says it's going to increase proactive farm visits and provide practical advice for farmers in the lead up to the season.
The primary sector is welcoming the appointment of Dr John Roche as the Prime Minister's new chief science advisor.
A highly experienced agricultural scientist with specialist knowledge of the dairy sector is the Prime Minister's new Chief Science Advisor.
A group of meat processing companies, directors and managers have been fined a total of $1.6 million for deliberately and illegally altering exported tallow for profit.
Movement controls have been lifted from Mainland Poultry’s Hillgrove Farm in Otago, after the successful eradication of H7N6 strain of high pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).
Fieldays 2025 opens this week with organisers saying the theme, 'Your Place', highlights the impact the event has on agriculture both in the Southern Hemisphere and across the globe.
Sam Carter, assistant manager for T&G's Pakowhai Sector, has been named the Hawke's Bay 2025 Young Grower of the Year.
The CEO of Apples and Pears NZ, Karen Morrish, says the strategic focus of her organisation is to improve grower returns.
A significant breakthrough in understanding facial eczema (FE) in livestock brings New Zealand closer to reducing the disease’s devastating impact on farmers, animals, and rural communities.
Farmer co-operative LIC has closed its satellite-backed pasture measurement platform – Space.
OPINION: The case of four Canterbury high country stations facing costly and complex consent hearing processes highlights the dilemma facing the farming sector as the country transitions into a replacement for the Resource Management Act (RMA).
OPINION: The Greens aren’t serious people when it comes to the economy, so let’s not spend too much on their…
OPINION: PM Chris Luxon is getting pinged lately for rolling out the old 'we're still a new government' line when…
