Orchardists fear future fruit glut

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32536, 20 February 1971, Page 2

Orchardists fear future fruit glut

(New Zealand Press Association)

HAMILTON, February 19.

Orchardists are meeting throughout the country to decide on ways to stabilise increasing production which is threatening to produce a glut of unmarketable fruit in the next few seasons.

The horticultural superintendent with the Agricultural Department in Hamilton (Mr A. J. T. Watts) said today that the New Zealand market could never consume the extra fruit likely to be produced by trees planted in the last few seasons.

“Growers then have two alternatives: they can either process the fruit locally, or export it. “We can’t export fruit unless there is a market, and with the threat of Britain’s entry into the E.E.C., the future looks most uncertain,” Mr Watts said.

Increased production in the northern hemisphere and new controlled atmospheric cool stores meant that European countries would be able to hold their fruit over to New Zealand’s season. This could reduce the demand there.

apart from any restrictions which might be imposed by the E.E.C.

Mr Watts said that during the last few seasons, growers had been making losses, and this trend could continue it production was not stabilised. One grower said suggestions that the Government impose levies on every tree planted had been made at some of the recent meetings held by orchardists. The suggested levies had ranged from 50 cents a tree to $5OO an acre which usually contained 110 trees.

However, the grower said, orchardists had recently been intensifying their trees per acre, planting up to 237 trees. These would soon be in production, putting out thousands of cases of fruit for which there was no market. Production on this scale would cause marketing, labour, and exporting problems. Nothing definite had been decided by growers at this stage, but when a decision ! was reached they would api proach Government with their proposals, said the grower.