Arguably, the country’s horticulture industry has been the pick of the bunch in and after the covid lockdown with harvests of apples and pears up 5% and kiwifruit up 6% from last season on generally positive growing conditions.
Kiwifruit co-operative Zespri was also able to work around harvest and disrupted shipping schedules, resulting in reduced capacity of pack houses at between 50% and 80% because of social distancing measures.
Its results, announced earlier this month, were also boosted on the strength of global demand for products with high vitamin C content in the wake of coronavirus as well as new Gold plantings. That saw global revenues from fruit sales jump 7% to $3.14 billion from the sale of 164.4 million trays of both NZ and non-NZ grown kiwifruit.
Kiwifruit growers benefited to the tune of record average returns from green kiwifruit of $67,295 a hectare and Gold at $161,660 a hectare.
Chief executive Dan Mathieson described the year as encouraging with a continuation of growth in the largest markets of Japan, China and Europe.
Nor have labour disruption and shipping schedules affected the early performance of other products, notably apples and wine.
However, Westpac senior agri economist Nathan Penny said that probably owes more to the weakness of the NZ dollar than any particular strength in demand or export prices.
He expects apple and wine export prices to fall over the next, recession phase of the covid crisis along with other export-focused fruit and vegetables.
And there is a greater risk of steeper decline in the price of premium products such as sauvignon blanc, cherries and Rocket apples, he said.
As the global recession deepens and international demand falters over the year Penny forecasts moderate downward pressure on overall agricultural export prices to return over a recession phase late this year and into next, which will affect demand, particularly at the restaurant and premium food end.
Behind the farm gate the main concerns relate to the availability of seasonal workers for next season’s harvest though orchardists are still reporting sufficient labour available for winter pruning.
That is notwithstanding the repatriation of thousands of migrant workers who were left stranded in the country during and post the covid-19 response lockdown.
Horticulture NZ chief executive Mike Chapman said the industry has worked closely with the Government to get almost 1000 Vanuatu nationals home though there are still an estimated 3000 recognised seasonal workers in the country.
While that will lead to a lack of highly skilled and experienced workers the industry has attracted about 2000 Kiwi workers from across industries including logging and tourism to provide enough labour for winter pruning.
Staffing agency AWF general manager Fleur Board, which has operations in Marlborough, Blenheim, Bay of Plenty and Hawke’s Bay, said there is also a migratory trend from other parts of the country to work on orchards.
So for people on work visas not tied to a named employer it is feasible to get work.
“We’ll get through this year but what everyone needs to turn their minds to is next year and the year after if immigration policies are tightened to accommodate growing unemployment.”
While retraining workers for horticulture is not complex or difficult some workers might not realise the nature of horticulture jobs and pickers has to be productive to keep their jobs.
Penny said agriculture in general is in a better position to pick up employees on the back of increasing unemployment, which is likely to double from 4.2% about 8% by the September quarter.
The obvious implication of this is that workers are going to be easier to find and the pressure on wages is going to be lower than pre-covid.
“Anecdotally, worker shortages during the kiwifruit picking season were less acute than in past seasons.”
A second implication is that new seasonal workers could come from a different cohort to that which normally works in the industry.
The Ministry of Social Development says a number of new Jobseeker benefit recipients over the lockdown had little or no recent benefit history and have had higher lost earnings compared to recipients over the same period a year ago.
Penny said that means those workers might be more skilled and relatively more productive than those usually in the labour pool.
“Though a lack of agriculture-specific work experience may require these workers to be trained up or used in a different way,” he said.
So the question is how agriculture can make best use of the newly available recruits.
“This may be a good time to introduce new technology or make better use of any underused on-orchard tech.”
On the basis the latest recruits are likely to be fairly tech-savvy he believes it is time for agriculture to put its best foot forward because these workers also have the potential to become future service partners to and/or advocates for the agricultural industry. – BusinessDesk
