John & Vicki Bostock

Hawke's Bay, johnb [at] bostocks [dot] co [dot] nz

"We used to have to blood-test all our workers for pesticide residues - the cholinesterase test - so they didn't get too high. Now we don't have to worry about their health as we are not using any organo-phosphates. At first the farm managers were reluctant to change to organics but now they are totally motivated by the new system."

John and Vicki were the first commercial-scale export apple orchard to go organic ten years ago. The impetus came from Vicki, who wanted healthy food for her children and a safe, pleasant environment to live in. John had done chemistry at University and knew the risks of constant exposure to chemicals, so he wasn't hard to persuade.

Being established conventional growers gave them the scale they needed to keep costs down and to succeed in exporting. It was a gradual conversion, and now 300ha of apples, some owned and some leased, are 100% certified organic. There are also onions and squash.

The short-term lease system in Hawke's Bay is a problem - many growers are thrashing soils because there is no incentive to take a long-term view, and it is hard to get the full benefit of investing in your soil.

Once again I heard the same story as on other farms - you have to be a good grower with a deep understanding of the biology of your farm to succeed at organics. There is no substitute for good management.

Ten years ago the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was so rigid in their import standards that ENZA required growers to make ten compulsory applications of organo-phosphates before they would accept fruit for the US market. Under that regime, John found that natural predators were destroyed, and leaf rollers were becoming resistant. The leaf roller population began to drop steeply after conversion, and it was the methods pioneered by the organic growers that led to the Integrated Pip Fruit Production system which no longer uses organo-phosphates.

The three challenges to meet in converting to organics were soil management, weed control, and insect pests.

Grass, clover, and wild flowers are encouraged under the trees to provide habitat for beneficial insects, and mown regularly to mulch the trees. Fish oils speed up decomposition of the leaf litter and incorporation into the soil. Compost, RPR and feldspar (for potassium) are used. On the home block soil, organic matter has been measured at 8-9%, where it used to be 1-2%. Available nutrients have increased because of microbial activity. Less irrigation water is needed as the organic matter in the soil holds more moisture.

A range of bio-controls deal with codlin, leaf roller, bronze beetle and powdery mildew. Pheromones confuse the codlin moth and prevent mating, with granulosis virus sprayed later to deal with any that make it through the confusion. Several Bt (baccilus thuringiensis) cultures are used for different pests such as leaf rollers, and the parasitic wasp Aphelinus kills woolly aphids.

Bronze beetle can be a problem on some blocks, and in these the understorey is cultivated to disrupt the emergence of the beetle from the larval stage in the soil. Then the sward is allowed to reseed.

Black spot still requires the use of lime-sulphur, a restricted substance under organic standards, which also deals with powdery mildew. John doesn't use it past 1 November - before this date it is most effective and does least damage to the trees.

The savings on pesticides are used to employ more people, for example to thin the apples manually. People come from the Pacific and south east Asia under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme and John in enthusiastic about the way the money they take home contributes to their families and communities.

Yields are a little below conventional apples, but there is not much difference, with around 3,000 export trays per hectare - over 4,000 trays for organic Braeburn last year - and certainly the premium which has been 30-100% over the last five years makes it a more profitable option. This last season has been very difficult with the recession hitting the market's ability to pay and the unexpected rise in the dollar reducing returns. However, even with the premium reducing to 20% they were better off than conventional growers.

John runs his own export business, selling into a number of markets including German supermarket chain El Natura. The market in Asia is growing strongly, and there is high demand for organic fruit. Locally the fruit sells through Fresh Direct, Commonsense Organics and Chantal.

As well as apples, John is growing onions, maize and squash. Not all the onions are converted yet, but there is a farm policy to have everything 100% organic by 2016. The key to organic veges is the soil. The high organic matter reduces weeds, disease and the need for irrigation. Unable to use direct drill because of its reliance on herbicides, John is using a minimum till system of strip tilling.

Tick beans are planted in Autumn, and fix nitrogen for the subsequent crop. Then strips are cultivated, with about half the area of the paddock left with vegetative cover. The squash seeds are planted in the cultivated rows, then when they are well up, but before they start runners, the strip between is cultivated with a single pass of a hoe to suppress the tick beans. This conserves moisture, carbon and nitrogen compared with turning the soil over with a plough.

Flame weeding, hand hoeing and GPS guided tractor hoeing are used to control weeds in the onions. The GPS is now so precise that the hoe can be driven 2 cm from the crop without risk of damaging it. It also enables the tractor to be driven on exactly the same wheel tracks each time it enters the paddock so that the rest of the soil is never compacted. John believes GPS holds even more promise to revolutionise farming. He is also experimenting with fish oils which kill weeds but do not penetrate the onion skins.

All the innovations have been shared with other growers. Co-operation rather than competition within the industry is seen as better for everyone. John contrasts this with the secrecy and closely-guarded intellectual property of genetic engineering.

"The money spent so far on GE, which none of our markets want, could have solved many of the issues of organic technology. There is a huge market for organic fruit and veges, and no-one wants GE onions. Yet that is where the money goes. It's crazy"

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