Quality fruit the aim

Press, 9 December 1976, Page 17

Quality fruit the aim

Staff reporter Wellington The standard of apples and pears bought by the public during the next few years should improve, according to the chairman of the Apple and Pear Marketing Board (Mr K. W. Kiddle). Fruitgrowers would have to accept that poorquality fruit would have to be dumped “at the tree,” if it was not to be a drag on the market, he said. The apple and pear industry had grown a lot in the last few years. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the volume of fruit produced would double by 1986. Only a small percentage of the fruit grown was graded as “fancy,” and so most of the increased volume would be in the commercial grade, Mr Kiddle said. This would hopelessly overload the local market. “With the volumes pro-

jected for future production, growers will have to get away from the idea that everything they grow can be sold,” he said. “We must aim for quality.”

The factories had continued to take everything of poorer quality off the local fresh-fruit market and process it. This fruit would continue to be processed if it could be done profitably, but growers should not assume that this would happen.

“We can increase the quality while we increase the volume,” Mr Kiddle said. “We have already been able to improve the colour standards for Delicious apples because of the greater volume — and this is what the public wants.

“I know that ‘dumping’ is an emotive word but dumping by the growers themselves is what we want,” said Mr Kiddle. “If growers do not dump, we will have to dump fruit which we have already bought, which we do not want to do.”