Fruit certification "strongly supported’

Press, 23 September 1988, Page 3

Fruit certification "strongly supported’

New Zealand fruitgrowers have given strong support to plans for the transferable crop certificate system after a series of meetings throughout New Zealand. The Canterbury director of the Fruitgrowers’ Association, Mr Barney Lloyd, said support had been overwhelming nationally, after meetings in Auckland, Hawke’s Bay, Nelson, Canterbury and Otago. Even if votes by a group of absent growers had been allowed at the Canterbury meeting recently, the result would still have been heavily in favour of the transferable crop certificate system.

That proposal would go to the National Pip Fruit Sector conference in December, and judging by the results of the vote among growers it was virtually certain to be endorsed. Mr Lloyd has taken issue with a report of criticism of the Canterbury meeting by a spokesman for a group of local growers. The meetings had been called by the New Zealand Fruitgrowers’ Federation. As the local director of the federation, it was normal for him to chair the meeting, and there was no conflict of interest, he said. The meetings were not called to discuss the lev-

ies, which had been in existence for many years, and were set annually to provide funds for the Apple and Pear Marketing Board. They were called to discuss the certificate system, which was proposed as a way of giving growers an identifiable interest in the board, Mr Lloyd said. This second-tier levy is a system under which growers pay once, as new crops are brought into production. The levy now was set at $1.35 per bushel, much less than the $4.11 a bushel suggested by a growers’ representative in a report in “The Press” yesterday.