Raoul Island “Unsuitable” For Citrus Growing

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29060, 24 November 1959, Page 20

Raoul Island “Unsuitable” For Citrus Growing

The cost of establishing a citrus fruit industry on Raoul Island in the Kermadec Group, north-east of New Zealand, is not economic, according to a recent soil survey of the island by officers of the Soil Bureau of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. Raoul Island has been occupied for several years as a weather reporting station. The survey shows that the amount of land suitable for citrus growing is not adequate to justify the capital expenditure required. According to the survey there are only 1121 acres of ploughable land on the island and the area of land suited to permanent agriculture is very limited. There are 495 acres suitable for orchard or market garden crops but only 1" of them are easily accessible by the present road system. Apart from these there are 1211 acres which would be suited to permanent pasture land; but only 360 of these can be easily reached from the roads.

Development of this mainly inaccessible land, which occurs in small scattered parcels, would have to include the cost of construction of access roads, the survey says.

But not even the development of roads could be started unless extensive improvements were made to the wharf and provision made for ship anchorages. The survey says that the proposal to establish a citrus growing industry cannot even be entertained unless better wharf and loading facilities are eventually provided to meet Meteorological Service’s needs, such as any

future expansion of the weather station on the island. It is even doubtful if Raoul Island should even be considered suitable for permanent farming settlement because violent volcanic activity which occurred three times in the latter half of the nineteenth century could occur again.

“This, possibility taken in connexion with the isolated situation of the island would hardly be likely to encourage serious farmers to take up land or businessmen to invest capital in its development,” says the survey.