Saturday, March 30, 2024

Protocols present harvest challenges

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As Covid-19 protocols for essential industry staff become clearer, the kiwifruit sector is facing some tough decisions on how realistic they will prove for this year’s harvest to be successful. Growers have only one day to go for registration as an “essential business”, and all growers and contractors with over five staff will be required to be registered with Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). 
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Businesses have until 5pm on Friday March 27 to be registered.

Doug Brown NZKGI chairman said he could not reiterate enough the importance of registering under Level 4 Covid-19 rules.

“The seriousness of these protocols must be understood by everybody. Te be deemed an essential business is not something we take lightly and everyone in the industry has an important responsibility to hold these protocols to the highest regard to ensure our status is not revoked,” he said. 

Businesses with less than five people still need to be able to prove their staff can maintain a two-metre social distance.

The documentation requires extensive explanation of the business’s steps to minimise contact, and plans for what the response would be to a virus outbreak.

Outwardly it would appear harvesting kiwifruit under the 2m protocol may not be too problematic. 

However Mark Hume, managing director of Hume Pack and Cool in Katikati said the problems are just starting to present themselves. His company processes about 5 million trays of kiwifruit a year. 

This year’s harvest is estimated at about 152 million trays.

“We are going to prefer locals for picking with their own transport because a gang of six would require six vehicles now instead of one van, it’s simply too expensive to run like that.”

NZKGI chief executive Nikki Johnson said the 2m rule in orchards may require pickers to do more walking to empty their bags, and more bins per row.

“Efficiency of picking may be impacted, but it is workable.” She acknowledged transport of picking staff was more problematic.

"But safety of workers is also paramount and government advice at present is that shared transport is a risk."

She said NZKGI was continuing to work with government to determine if there were practical measures to manage risk but allow shared transport to continue.

The real problems were going to arise in packhouse environments, despite there being people wanting to work in them.

Hume said since speaking about the challenges on National Radio he had multiple texts from people said they will “go nuts” if they have to stay at home, and want to work.

His confidence was shared by CEO of Apata Stu Weston who said the novelty of NetFlix and the couch were likely to wear off quickly for anyone accustomed to going to work regularly.

The announcement that 1300 Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) staff are no longer able to make it for harvest has an upside for local people wanting to engage in work over the period.

“We are offering to people, if you have a younger family and want to be separate but still work, we have accommodation they can stay in.” 

The industry has invested millions over the past two years in worker accommodation as it grappled with strong crop volume growth.

Hume is concerned trying to enforce the 2m social distancing rule in packhouses may prove simply impractical.

“It is hard to understand how if you have two staff members not speaking, working facing away from each other but within 2m that would be a problem. 

“It is allowed in hospitals where staff work closely, so packhouses should pose even less risk as long as they are not facing and speaking directly to each other.”

Trying to enforce the rule is likely to see packhouses grind down to less than 50% capacity throughput.

“And I don’t know how economic that is going to be. With SunGold, you may still just pay the bills, but with Green, well we will just have to see what happens.”

About 5% of the national crop has been harvested, but the peak season is still to come later in April, early May.

With productivity slowing significantly, it was a real risk the SunGold crop would not all be harvested before the end of May.

“And that is only if it is still in a condition to be harvested.”

One grower who spoke to Farmers Weekly said they were being told to simply get in line and wait for a notification on harvest as packhouses gear up in the new conditions.

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