Puketiro Orchard, Te Puke, Bay of Plenty. Peter & Gwen Ombler ombler [at] eol [dot] co [dot] nz (ombler [at] eol [dot] co [dot] nz)
"Going organic was pretty out there in 1998 - a lot of people thought I was crazy."
Peter and Gwen bought their 12 hectares of mostly bare land in 1987. Most of it was ideal for kiwifruit, which they planted on 6.2 ha, with 1 ha of plums and avocados and 1 ha of Tasmanian Blackwood on the swampy ground, and a beautifully laid out garden around the house. Kiwifruit was the coming thing in the late eighties so Peter looked for a point of difference in the market. Going organic the following year was a risk, but it has paid off and more and more growers have joined them. This year Zespri predicts the average orchard gate return for organic green kiwifruit will be $40,451 per hectare compared with $29,033 for conventional - despite the lower yield of organics. The average return for KiwiGold (the gold variety of kiwifruit), which is much harder to grow organically, is $81,500/ha.
Peter's story is not just about his personal business, but about the growing move towards organic practices in the whole industry.
In 1991 the industry launched KiwiGreen, an IPM (integrated pest management) system which avoided insecticides after fruit set. The practices the organic growers had developed over the years, by trial and error, were adopted by the whole industry - mineral oils to control scale insects and Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) for leaf roller moths. Insects are not really a problem in the industry now.
Composts and rock phosphate, also pioneered by organic growers, are also widely used now in conventional orchards.
Peter uses 10 tonnes/ha of compost, fishmeal from Nelson, and RPR (reactive phosphate rock). Copies of soil tests done in 1992 and 2008 show that soil fertility has improved over that time without conventional fertilisers. Phosphorous, potassium and calcium are all significantly increased and pH is up a little.
In 1999 Peter changed his two blocks of KiwiGold back to conventional because the fruit blossom was being decimated by birds. KiwiGold flowers a month earlier when there isn't much other food around and intensive use of automatic shotguns and reflective CDs just didn't manage the problem, which doesn't occur a month later with the KiwiGreen. Conventional growing uses Mesurol, a bird repellant and toxic carbamate insecticide which is not permitted under organic standards.
This is one of the two main differences between organic and conventional kiwifruit growing. The other is the much better known Hi-Cane which greatly increases fruit set and condenses pollination time into one week rather than three. Bees don't much like kiwifruit and have to be fed sugar while they are in the orchard so minimising the time they have to spend there is a plus. The industry is spending $600,000 to find a safer replacement for Hi-Cane but so far without success. Hi-Cane is largely responsible for the much higher yields of the conventional vs organic blocks.
Peter trained in horticulture at Lincoln, is President of the NZ Kiwifruit Growers Inc and was until recently a director on the Research and Development Board at Zespri. He has been the main driver of an initiative to reduce spray drift from Hi-Cane while they search for an alternative. The spray is highly toxic, especially to dogs, and greatly resented by neighbours who suffer spray drift. With funding from the Sustainable Farming Fund, they were able to adapt the 'air inclusion nozzle' for use on kiwifruit. This is now used by 85% of the industry, and reduces spray drift by 90% - the air in the spray droplet slows it down after its immediate target so less drifts offsite.
Other main differences between Peter's organic and conventional plots are the use of some soluble nitrogen as calcium ammonium nitrate, some magnesium sulphate, and the biostimulant Benefit.
Peter repeated the story I have heard from other farmers - organic growers tend to be top end farmers all round, as they have to understand the biology of their system well enough to avoid problems without chemicals. The industry average yield for Green is 8,000 trays/ha, with organic being 7,000 trays. Peter gets on average 14,000 trays for conventional and 9,000 trays for organic. I asked him whether it was his site or his management practice, and he said "attention to detail, and timing".
When you walk through the orchard it is easy to see the reason for the superior yield. The canopy has been very evenly spread out and tied down so that every fruit has sun and there is no horizontal space without fruit in it. I have seen others with large gaps in the canopy and bunches of fruiting leaders where the sun can't penetrate. As we walked he picked off 'water shoots' that don't fruit but take energy from the plant, but left those that will be next year's fruiting wood or that have leaves old enough to feed the plant. A very skilled and time-consuming job, and performed so fast I had trouble following what he was doing.
A new development for the higher value Gold is a new block of young vines under a translucent frost/hail/wind cover with strings for the vines to climb. They grow faster when growing uphill, and when they are long enough the strings are cut and they are tied out horizontally in the usual way. It will be interesting to see whether this innovation pays off.
Peter has also thought carefully about shelter species and now plants "clean" casuarina, which does not provide habitat for any nuisance bugs like lace wings, rather than redwoods which do. Prevention of insect attack is better than attempted cure.
This is an industry which has worked to minimise its environmental footprint over time, and is committed to staying ahead internationally and continuing to find solutions to the remaining issues of Mesurol and Hi-Cane.
Listen to a conversation between this farmer and Jeanette
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A report on climate change adaptation in the kiwifruit industry, based on in-depth interviews with twenty kiwifruit growers in the Bay of Plenty region and funded through the MAF Climate Change - 'Plan of Action' Research Programme 2007/08 is available here.
