On blackcurrant growing

Press, 15 August 1980, Page 8

On blackcurrant growing

Intensive blackcurrant growing in Mid-Canter-bury will provide more employment, improved individual incomes, and export earnings, Mr S. F. Mclntosh told members of the Canterbury-Westland section of the New Zea-land-Institute of Agricultural; Science last week. There are nearly 40 hectares ..of blackcurrants, plus some blueberries on the Mclntosh mixed farm at Willowby, near Ashburton.

He told members of the institute he had been looking for alternatives to his conventional farming practices so that his sons could be brought into the farming operations.

Lilly bulbs were grown on a large scale, and then eight years ago he went to a general horticultural field day at Lincoln College, where a blackcurrant harvester, built by the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural Engineering, was demonstrated.

Mr Mclntosh said he saw a vast potential in blackcurrants arid con-

sequently planted out 16 hectares.

He said he was warned that the export potential of the crop was limited and approaches to the Trade and Industry Department met with little success.

After cropping blackcurrants for three years he flew to Australia to try and arrange a market for the crop. He chose a name at random from a list of agents supplied by a trading bank and met with immediate success.

A contract for the delivery of a crop to Hobart was arranged but on his return to Ashburton a hail-storm wiped out about half of his crop. He said the future of blackcurrants in New Zealand was virtually assured — if only because the Rural Bank had “poured millions of dollars into the industry and I cannot see the Government throwing that away.” T,he industry would probably develop along the lines of the North Island kiwifruit industry., What would be required

in the near future was a lot of promotion, both overseas and in New Zealand, and a reasonable tonnage of blackcurrants to back up that promotion.

Mr Barry Abernethy, a farming consultant in MidCanterbury, said it had been very interesting observing the gradual assimilation of horticulture into the more conventional farming pattern. Generally those who had become involved in growing blackcurrants and other horticultural crops were top flight mixed farmers looking for a -challenge and more financial independence. “Some will fail, in a natural culling process. Horticulutre is not a farming method easily established on'a flagging farm,’’ Mr Abernethy said. Blackcurrants had, however, proven a popular choice of crop because of its export possibilities, it was not too technologically demanding, it suited mass production, and the crop left room for plenty of “leiwi . ingenuity.”