Kia ora koutou,
Its been great to be out visiting so many managers and students over the past two weeks. We appreciate your time, and acknowledge the many supportive workplace environments helping upskill our workforce. Time is the biggest factor to completing our courses – we have pushed the students pretty hard to complete assessments earlier in the year so they do not start snowballing into something monstrous come November, when they are even more busy. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve our system and get more work in earlier we would love to hear them.
We hope to have the majority of our Level 4 students complete this year, and will have a healthy cohort from Level 3 going into that course for 2024. We are taking enrolments for all courses from late November, and would appreciate getting everyone’s names down by mid December. So please talk to your staff and if you want further information do not hesitate to contact us.
Level 3 students should now have completed the irrigation workbook. It encourages the student to understand what their irrigation in the workplace looks like and assesses how well they understand how to maintain different parts in the system. They also have a thinning workbook which asks the students to describe a chemical or hand thinning task and consult with their manager on the standards they achieve. This is due on the 1st of December.
Level 4 has nearly finished all classes for the year. Steven will be visiting the students to help motivate them to finalise all assessments by the 12th of December and more importantly to complete the apprenticeship and graduate on the 1st February 2024!
Please remind students to apply for the HBFA scholarships before Nov 30th via the link we have texted, or through the website https://hbfa.co.nz/level-3-4-scholarship-application/ . This is paid direct to the student.
Noho ora mai,
Clare
With the new growing season now well underway, we are keen to support severely Cyclone Impacted members with grants to offset unforeseen costs associated with replacing or repairing cyclone damaged and business critical equipment. This could be anything from misplaced tools to fixing a flood damaged pump that no longer works.
In an effort to target those hardest hit, the criteria for accessing these grants is those growers who lost more than 50% of their 2023 crop and/or had a home flooded as result of the cyclone. If you meet this criteria we strongly encourage you to apply.
As announced a number of weeks ago, the Hawke’s Bay Horticulture Advisory Group (HBHAG) has obtained funding through the North Island Weather Events Fund (NIWE) to pay third-party advisors to support your financial recovery.
This could mean helping you to prepare business plans for your bank, or to support your application to the Kānoa Primary Producer Finance Scheme and/or The Treasury Loan Guarantee Scheme.
The funding is limited and will be allocated based on the number of qualifying applications submitted. Successful applicants will be issued with confirmation to redeem the support payment with their nominated advisor.
We encourage any grower materially impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle and/or Cyclone Hale who has not already submitted their application to do so by completing the following simple online form and submitting it on or before Thursday, 30 November 2023.
Apply HERE
When looking for solutions for future success of your orchard business, have you considered the benefits of establishing a KiwiSaver type fund / account for your farm for testing techniques for future resilience? Establishing an ‘OrchardSaver’ cash fund on hand for testing differential techniques within your growing system provides an excellent framework for assessing what works and what doesn’t and enables you to tailor to the level of risk you are comfortable in taking. R&D expenditure may also provide tax benefits and should be discussed with your accountant.
The first step is to undertake an analysis on your business and consider what is working well and perhaps what isn’t working as well? Are there particular aspects of inefficiencies? an interesting article that suggested a change, but the risks of block wide change lie outside of your risk appetite or financial means? or simply observed something that may be contrary to convention? Identify these, make a list, and include annotations on what changes are worth testing so that when the opportunity presents itself, a ready-made test is waiting.
With list in hand, the inevitable question is how do I fund these initiatives? Ideally, all test and trial work should be funded with cash as borrowing to complete experiments is counterintuitive where there is no guarantee of outcome. At a recent symposium John King, a Holistic and Regenerative Farming Advisor from Canterbury recounted advice that farmers and growers should be putting 6% of their income into cash fund for testing and trialling new technologies as a toys and tests slush fund. Looking at this in a different context, you pay yourself and staff a KiwiSaver contribution for future resilience, so what better way to plan for the future of the business than paying an OrchardSaver contribution to the business for future investment!
The final step is to look at implementing trials within your system to test where improvements can be made. Back your own observations made here, no one else has the wealth of extensive observations of change within a system as the grower themselves, over multiple seasons, and multiple crop years. Anything that you have observed as making a positive (or negative) change can be tested here to provide certainty including:
Differential treatments;
Sensitivities to spray timings;
Differential crop loadings; or
Hot composting of green waste.
Investment in future resilience of the farming system is as important as planning for your own financial wellbeing in retirement.
We are in a time of rapid change and will need to do things differently to ensure success in the future as well as looking after the here and now. As Aristotle said, “well begun is half done”, so next review of your business operation and budget, take the time to set up plan to identify, finance, and implement tests and trials so that you are better placed for technology and change.
Carl O’Brien
Agfirst Consultants (HB) Ltd
As a we start the harvest season in Hawke’s Bay, it’s interesting to have a handle on what’s happening in Central Otago. There has been a bit more rain than is normal but not to a level that cannot be controlled by normal orchard husbandry. There have been no significant frosts or hailstorms, but parts of Central Otago had a wind event that damaged a few bird exclusion cages. These were mostly older structures that were not built to rigorous standards.
Crop loads for Central Otago cherries are good for the early season fruit, and a little variable for main season production. That said, no shortage is predicted, as the moderate sets are not general but specific to some orchards and some varieties. Apricots have set a very big crop and have been heavily hand thinned. Peach and nectarine have full crops and will only require a touch up thin. The first Burlat will be picked this week or early next week.
Here in Hawke’s Bay, the cumulative effects of three wet seasons and a cyclone are still being felt. Blocks that were not affected by silt or flooding are not setting up full crops, and the same variety on the same orchard is exhibiting different crop loads. Affected orchards have varying degrees of set and tree health, and in many cases, it will take at least a season to come back into normal production.
Cherries are generally moderately cropped although there is variation. Apricots have bigger crops than last season but are not fully cropped. Peaches and nectarines are variable as well but generally not fully cropped either. Plums may be the exception, but more time is needed to fully determine where this crop will land. Continued tree deaths are being noted in those blocks that were directly affected by cyclone Gabrielle.
All summerfruit is still in the November drop, natural thinning period, across both districts so the full tale is not yet clear.
Growing degree days are normal or a bit below normal after a recent flat period, but accumulation should pick up with the heat that is being experienced at the moment. The dry period of recent times is welcomed with irrigation needing to be turned on and used where available.
Orchard cashflow will be helped if farmgate and retail prices hold up as per last season. Should the seasons remain constant across the two regions, with Hawke’s Bay on a lighter maybe earlier crop, and Central Otago on a heavier crop and therefore a little later, the clash between these two areas might be avoided as well.
Richard Mills
Summerfruit Technical Advisor
021 632559
Once again, like September, rainfall late in the month meant October’s totals for the region fell in the near normal range. However, the Ruahine Range, Ruataniwha Plains and the southern coast were the outliers and recorded above normal rainfall. Other measures of our water stocks covered the range of possibilities – soil moisture levels were higher than normal for the month, groundwater levels were near normal and river flows were below normal due to the soils still absorbing the bulk of the rain.
Soil temperatures were warm for mid-spring, helped along by warmer than average sea temperatures, which also stoked daytime air temperatures to almost 1°C above average. Overnight temperatures were fairly typical for October and only one frost was recorded at our Bridge Pa site on the very first day of the month.
El Niño conditions are with us and are destined to influence our weather throughout summer. We also have a positive Indian Ocean Dipole currently underway. The predominant wind flow across the next three months is expected to be westerly, driven by higher than normal sea surface pressure over and north of the country and lower pressure to the south. That would all point to drier and warmer conditions than usual, which is what most of the seasonal forecast models suggest. But the odd burst of rain, aided by the warm seas around us, is likely to push us into the near normal range for November at least.
Percentage of Normal Rainfall
Dr Kathleen Kozyniak
Principal Scientist Air
Hawke’s Bay Regional Council
Metservice has issued a rain warning for parts of the region, although the forecast rainfall totals over the next few days are less than a 1:5 year event. This is unlikely to cause any significant issues on the major rivers. This could, however, cause some localised ponding and roading issues.
Please have a look at what this means for river levels on the infographic below.
You can also keep track of levels at our river level page at www.hbrc.govt.nz/environment/river-levels/.
Most of the trees have now woken up, with primary thinning decisions waiting to be executed when the weather window presents itself.
You will have heard this repeated across a few forums now, but this season more than ever, boots on the ground in the orchard, will be critical to confirm chemical thinning decision making. Chemical thinning always requires a careful assessment and knowledge of each block, but coming off the back of the 2023 season where we know tree health has been compromised, walking the orchard has more meaning than ever before.
The ground was waterlogged for significant periods right across the bay, with some orchards having the added complication of silt deposition of varying depths across the blocks. Reduced solar radiation over the 2023 season means that the tree’s carbohydrate reserves may be lower, and in some orchards a lack of pruning may mean higher bud loads than normal. Consequently, tree health will be a significant factor when making crop loading and therefore chemical thinning decisions. Things to look out for include variations of bloom density and synchronisation, flower development and leaf quality all provide a picture of potential tree stress.
Check your drainage and soil moisture levels before launching into an aggressive chemical thinning programme. Especially in situations with dark/shaded canopies, poor nutrient status and wet feet. Chemical thinning brews need to be carefully considered, as most products add an additional stressor to an already stressed trees.
In areas where trees have poor root health, and low carbohydrate reserves, there may be a high natural drop. In blocks which have been severely affected, leaving the crops to set naturally and observe at the 6-7mm may be a more cautious strategy.
At a time when the labour cost is significant, we want to achieve full crops on the higher margin varieties, and reduce the hand thinning costs on others.
Once you have formed your plan, you can alter it as the weather windows and natural flower stages and fruit set allow.
Sarah de Bruin
Agfirst Horticultural Consultant
Wondering about the migrant labour or overseas workers coming into the country? PICMI has been tracking this data using the numbers from MBIE’s Migrant Data Explorer.
The data is up to 31 September 2023.
This month, the population of WHV in the country looks to be growing again like last year, and the number of WHV issued is on the increase bringing it back around the historical base rage (30-40K).
🌱 The population WHV (still living in the country) is stable and increasing—there are almost just under 31,000 people (10% up from last month)..
🌱There has been a decrease in the number of WHVs issued, reaching 4,332 (an roughly 20% reduction). It is now 20 % under the average monthly count of 5,000 from previous years.
There are more details on the PICMI website including historical stats or register with them directly for updates into your inbox.
NZAPI’s Data, Compliance and Technical Support Project is well underway this month. Funded from the MPI North Island Weather Events Fund, the project includes:
Funding of services for growers includes First Aid and Growsafe Certification courses – available in Hastings/Napier and Gisborne. NZAPI has also arranged soil, water, and leaf testing services, and for growers to have on-orchard assistance with compliance requirements such as GlobalGAP.
For many growers, the cyclone not only took the crop but also took orchard signage, spray sheds, paperwork, and evidence. The purpose of this project is to ensure that growers are well supported in both compliance and technical activities so they can meet all requirements and grow a quality crop for 2024. While we know that flood affected growers have a significant amount of work ahead of them, we hope that this project will relieve some of the pressure that they are under.
Thanks to this project, the NZAPI Technical Field Days will continue, and regular meetings will commence in November so that growers can get together to discuss progress and compare outcomes of flood initiatives.
With a final cut-off date of 31 December 2023, NZAPI are committed to ensuring apple and pear growers are provided with all the assistance they need before this date.
