Season's first kiwifruit China bound
Zespri's first charter shipment of the 2024 New Zealand kiwifruit season is on its way to Shanghai.
ZESPRI’S GOLD crop will be down about 45-50% this year, but there are positives to the season.
That reduction is mostly due to about 70% of Gold growers grafting to the new Psa-resistant cultivar G3, rather than to the effects of the vine-killing disease itself.
Meanwhile, Green volumes will be the same as last year at 70 million trays. The impact of Psa on Green volumes has been “negligible”, says Simon Limmer, Zespri’s general manager of grower and government relations.
About two years of full production are lost in the transition from the old Gold variety to the new G3, he says. Gold, at 13 million trays, this season is about 45-50% down on last season and even further on the previous peak season. But this year should be the lowest volume year in the recovery phase.
“Growers have had to cut the heads off their old vines and graft a new variety into their trunk and it will take a couple of years before they start getting meaningful production. By December this year we should see confirmation of the recovery and volumes start to grow again for next season. But we won’t recover back to previous volumes for a couple of seasons.”
But the new variety, G3, is “looking really good”. “We’ve been lucky with the summer. The drought was disastrous for most of the primary sector. But for kiwifruit it had two positive effects: it countered Psa and it created high tasting kiwifruit – a vintage crop – so that’s helping in the marketplace.
“And despite some of the challenges economically in places like Europe and despite the strong headwind from a strong New Zealand dollar, the markets are performing pretty well.”
Market conditions, smaller volumes and good tasting fruit all translate into good returns, but “it is a bit early to conclude how the season is going to do”. The season closes in October-November.
South Waikato farm manager Ben Purua’s amazing transformation from gang life to milking cows was rewarded with the Ahuwhenua Young Maori Farmer award last night.
Bankers have been making record profits in the last few years, but those aren’t the only records they’ve been breaking, says Federated Farmers vice president Richard McIntyre.
The 2023-24 season has been a roller coaster ride for Waikato dairy farmers, according to Federated Farmers dairy section chair, Mathew Zonderop.
Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) director general Ray Smith says job cuts announced this morning will not impact the way the Ministry is organised or merge business units.
Scales Corporation is acquiring a number of orchard assets from Bostock Group.
Family and solidarity shone through at the 75 years of Ferdon sale in Otorohanga last month.
OPINION: This old mutt well remembers the wailing, whining and gnashing of teeth by former West Coast MP and Labour…
OPINION: Your canine crusader gets a little fed up with the some in media, union hacks, opposition politicians and hard-core…