2024–25 apple harvest exceeds expectations, says Apples and Pears NZ CEO
The 2024-25 season apple harvest has “well and truly exceeded expectations”, says Apples and Pears NZ chief executive Karen Morrish.
Apple and pear growers around the country have slammed the Government's handling of the overseas workers who pick a substantial amount of NZ's apple crop each year.
Richard Punter, chairman of Apple and Pears NZ, says the Government simply doesn't understand the role performed by these people, who work under the RSE or recognised seasonal employer scheme.
Punter says describing these people as 'unskilled workers' is naïve and uncharitable. He says the real situation is quite the opposite.
"The RSE's are not unskilled labour. The fact is they are skilled animal workers," he told Rural News. "Describing them as cheap and unskilled is offensive. We have multi-generational families that come over from the Pacific Islands and work in NZ year after year."
Hunter says "people in Wellington" don't understand that in the apple industry, at a particular time of the year and in a puff of smoke, thousands of skilled manual workers appear in the country, pick the crop and in six weeks' time they disappear again.
"It's not a job, it's not a career. It's a task that has to be done at particular point in time and with speed and with particular skills," he adds.
Punter believes the problem is not unique to NZ. He says Britain has a similar problem where thousands of dollars has been spent advertitising for local people to take jobs in the primary sector and few have turned up or stayed on.
"As a university professor says that phenomenon should not come as any surprise as the work ethic has been bred out of many people."
He saw this on his own property where two young people "gave up" working after just a matter of hours because "they didn't like the manual work".
Punter says despite the labour shortages, larger apple producers will soldier on - even if their yields and returns are down and some of their fruit is not picked.
"The people who will badly hurt are the small family orchards," he explains. "This government has chucked them under the bus and just don't care. At the same time, the current generation of business leaders have never had to deal with a government that just takes a decision and does it."
Punter says this is placing huge stress on these people.
"The current Labour Government doesn't have to talk to coalition partners, there is no negotiation and they have a specific, ideological position they are determined to implement."
An independent report, prepared for Alliance farmer shareholders is backing the proposed $250 million joint venture investment by Irish company Dawn Meats Group.
Whangarei field service technician, Bryce Dickson has cemented his place in John Deere’s history, becoming the first ever person to win an award for the third time at the annual Australian and New Zealand Technician of the Year Awards, announced at a gala dinner in Brisbane last night.
NZPork has appointed Auckland-based Paul Bucknell as its new chair.
The Government claims to have delivered on its election promise to protect productive farmland from emissions trading scheme (ETS) but red meat farmers aren’t happy.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
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