Thursday, March 28, 2024

Book charts kiwifruit success

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The time agricultural journalist Elaine Fisher spent writing a book about the kiwifruit industry’s history was as much a story about her own back yard as it was about the industry.
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The Bay of Plenty writer has spent many professional hours covering the industry’s ups and downs, from the darkest days of the Psa discovery to the more recent, rapid rise of SunGold as a million dollars a hectare, rock star of the fruit world.

Fisher was commissioned by Kiwifruit Growers to write The Seeds of Success, released in time for the organisation’s 25th anniversary it celebrated this month.

The book captures the 100-year history of kiwifruit, once known as Chinese gooseberry, growing in NZ, providing an entertaining and enlightening perspective on an industry that leaves readers with a sense it could only ever have happened in NZ.

That was thanks to a pioneering combination of landscape, climate, people and opportunities. 

But along the way it was a journey tempered with speculation and typical pioneering boom-and-bust cycles that might well have pushed kiwifruit into the shady realms of ostrich or goat farming.

Fisher has traced the industry’s early days that started from the intrepid visit by Wanganui Girls College headmistress Isabel Fraser to China via Japan to see her missionary sister. 

She had a chance encounter with British naturalist Ernest Henry Wilson, an Indiana Jones character collecting new plant species in China, who gave her the seeds forming the stock for today’s industry. 

It was good fortune that meant a few thousand seeds were bought to NZ.

But it was even greater fortune they gave rise to male and female plants, whereas those that went to the United States and Britain were only male.

“It struck me that throughout the industry’s success story there have been these quite serendipitous events occur that helped give NZ a head start,” Fisher said.

Her work traces the gritty reality of establishing a completely new fruit type in a country still in its pioneering heydays, where a bunch of hardened individual growers around Whanganui worked to get this unique fruit established.

The names of some of them continue to live on today with Bruno Just and Hayward Wright having their names bestowed on the early varieties cultivated from the original seeds. 

Bruno fell quickly out of favour because of its poorer keeping qualities while Hayward remains the dominant green variety today. 

Ironically, though it was Bruno rootstock that played a crucial role almost a century later as the basis for re-establishing gold kiwifruit in the wake of Psa devastation, thanks to its tolerance of the bacteria. 

The industry’s tendency to share its rootstock around relatively liberally is touched on. Samples of the Hayward variety were sent to the US as early as 1935 but, fortunately, languished in a research orchard for many years until the Americans realised the success NZ was enjoying.

The jagged pathway to export success is traced by Fisher, with families that are prominent in the industry today recounting the tough times trying to make a living off the newly commercialised crop.

The story of Jim and Molly MacLoughlin, regarded as the founders of the industry in Te Puke, is a typical one. 

The family secured some land over the Depression after Jim’s redundancy and started to grow the fruit. Their orchard was stymied by having their only truck commandeered for the war and the young mum Molly was left to walk 8km down No.3 road with her small children to get into Te Puke.

A generation of younger growers used to marketing their fruit under the Zespri single desk banner could be forgiven for being unaware of the trials and tensions the industry went through to get to today’s successful status.

However, Fisher recounts the dark days of reform in the late eighties after changes in government policy and the stock market crash sucked out much of the investor funds from the sector.

Deep divisions existed over whether the industry should form a marketing board or individuals should go it alone. 

“It was pretty intense stuff, requiring 80% grower support and some very strong personalities on both sides of the table.”

Fisher credits the strength of Nelson grower John Palmer, who worked closely with then Agriculture Minister John Falloon as being instrumental in getting cohesion and negotiating the sector’s way through an $80 million debt.

“As a sector it has had more than its share of ups and downs but what came through was the determination of individuals to see the sector grow. It’s been a good journey to write about.”

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