Strawberry growing no easy pickings!

However, around 5-6 years ago, Rakich decided a switch to hydroponic growing was the way to go at their Whenuapai property, Danube Orchards. “We had always been doing strawberries the traditional way in the ground on mounds,” Rakich, who is Strawberry Growers NZ chairman, told Hort News.

“I decided six years ago my ground was getting worse, my soil structure wasn’t good. I have some nice areas but I have too much clay here. The motorway went through so we lost some land with better soil.”

He says this has made it harder and it restricted crop rotation. It was also harder to get soil conditions right.

Labour was another driver of change; lower labour costs plus the fact that his best and long serving workers were getting older. The elevated hydroponic ‘tabletops’ mean less bending and easier picking.

“They were my good workers but they were struggling. That’s when I decided to grow on tabletops. My reason wasn’t to get an earlier or longer season, it was just to grow strawberries the same but more easily and with less cost,” he told Hort News.

“I knew the capital cost was going to be huge but my annual costs would be less – not having to fumigate, the polythene etc – but the main thing was labour costs. My older, good workers could still do it. The young ones come and go because they want full time work, which I can’t offer.”

Rakich says most people that grow on tabletops put them under cover, which means they have a longer season.

“That is the way it should be done. Growing like we do, the weather still affects them.”

But Rakich says that capital cost would have been even higher and his aim was not major expansion but to make the job easier and cut costs.

The capital cost was $300,000/ha for a Haygrove system, an English based company. Before investing, he experimented with his own makeshift models to decide if it would work.

Rakich admits when the plant manufactured in England and China arrived, and his property was covered with multiple components all needing construction, he wondered if he had done the right thing.

He adds that it is hard to estimate his savings, because costs have risen with inflation and the past two seasons have been difficult for the sector in general, but the benefits of the hydroponic system are clear. The main saving is labour.

“I can do it with fewer workers. The workers work more efficiently. They are happier because they are standing and not walking back and forwards with picking boxes.

“They are on trolleys, they work all the way down the row, get to the end, unload the trolley, put the empty boxes back on and work back up the other side of the row. It is a lot more efficient.”

He says another beauty of the system is control – it shows pretty quickly if the inputs are wrong so it’s easily rectified.

Rakich has managed to extend his season by a month because he doesn’t have to prepare the soil. Under the previous system they would have done that in February to ensure the ground was dry. “With the table top it doesn’t matter. There’s no tractor work, you don’t have to go on the ground. You put the bags up, hydrate the bags and plant. It’s less of that worry.”

He supplies Foodstuffs, which takes all his produce. In the early days, his family were exporters mainly to the United States where there was window, from October, November and sometimes December. Now strawberries are grown there almost year-round.

Continuing The Family Tradition

Anthony Rakich's grandparents grew mainly pipfruit and stonefruit in Henderson, but his grandmother always grew strawberries.

There is a photo of his father, who is now 92, as a baby in the strawberries – so the family has been growing the crop for more than 90 years.

The family moved to the Whenuapai property in the early 1970s where his father continued pipfruit and stonefruit, with a small block of strawberries. When Anthony left school, he followed his mother’s advice to try another job first for a different experience. However, in 1984 he decided to come back to the orchard and grow strawberries.

They were still growing apples but industry deregulation in the early 1990s killed those sectors for Auckland growers.

“We couldn’t compete with down the line, they can grow apples cheaper than we can,” he told Hort News. “We went bigger into strawberries and just focused on them.”

Rakich says their strawberries were then mainly exported but there were too many uncontrollable factors like flights, which could hold up exports for days.

“We’d have to send the strawberries earmarked for export into the likes of Turners and Growers. But so would everyone else and we would get terrible money for it,” he explains.

“Most times when exports stopped, it seemed to be a Friday and the markets weren’t open on Saturday. What do you do with your fruit? You’ve got to cool store it until Sunday night. We made the decision, let’s just focus on the local market.”

Building up to the new season, he hopes the wet winter will mean a dryer spring and the magic formula of good production and good prices.

The last couple of years have been tough.

Last year, prices were up but production was down. There was a lot of second grade fruit for all outdoor growers which still had to be processed.

“The year before that wasn’t a good year either, so hopefully this year is better.

“All our costs have gone up, all the packaging, transport with fuel, labour has gone up again, but strawberries are supply and demand. We can’t hold them back to create demand because they go off. What we pick we have to sell. If there’s a flush, it affects the price.”

Rakich admits most people that grow hydroponics on tabletops are also under cover and they can have a longer season.

“They can go to April, May – some even go to June. But that’s not what I wanted anyway,” he says.

“I did this to make it easier, save a bit of money hopefully and keep my staff.”