Our Orchards’ Yield Exported To Far Lands;

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 65, 9 December 1938, Page 7 (Supplement)

Our Orchards’ Yield Exported To Far Lands;

Surplus Apples Are Wasted For Lack .Of Eaters

ACRES and acres of delicate sweet-scented .flowering' orchard trees in spring, astir with the murmurous wings of bees, rich with pro- : raise of a fruitful autumn, lend old-world ! beauty to New Zealand yearly in apple-blossom time, Wide and fertile,'the orchards of New Zealand grow i rosy fruit for the children of England, Belgium, ’Canada, the Argentine, Brazil and the United States, ■Fiji and Samoa—lso,ooo,ooo apples over and above ithose eaten by the people of this Dominion. And, even . then, there are more left over than the growers know at present what to do with.

New Zealand’s, apple exports vary from 38,000,000 jo C0,000,0001b, yearly, . They are grown mostly in .Central Otago,-South ..Canterbury, Nelson, Blenheim, Hawke’s Bay, Auckland and North Auckland, districts where the sun shines, brightest and longest, where the rainfall is the kindliest, frosts of winter least severe. On the whole, the South Island is better for berries, the North for stone and citrus fruits.-

i • Commercial orchards of New Zealand cover-27,000 .■acres, the average holding being about two and a half i acres. Such small orchards are run in conjunction with I Other means of farming; it takes about a 10-acre ■ Orchard to support a family.. An acre of land will, in

a good year, yield about 600 bushels, 1000 cases, of fruit.

Production of apples at present greatly exceeds consumption and exports. Annually many tons of secondquality fruit go to waste. Apples are strictly inspected and graded for export, for this is in a sense a luxury trade: purchasers would rather have no apple than a poor quality apple, and if the standard of New Zealand apples on the overseas market were allowed to deteriorate, her custom would rapidly wane. So every year the standard of the fruitsent overseas is improved, to .win-wider markets and more customers.

This means that for some 300,000 bushels of sound but second-grade apples there is no sale. The jam and fruit-preserving industries, and home.consumption, arc fed with first-quality fruit. If all surplus secondquality apples were placed upon the local market, the resultant glut would seriously affect sales of first-grade fruit, without going far to solve the growers’ difficulty. Recently the proposal was made that these -waste apples be crushed and their juice extracted, to be sold unfermented, or made into cider or apple vinegar. Cider is already manufactured in New Zealand;, there is a thriving cider .industry in Hawke’s Bay, and in Nelson. But cider has never become established as a popular beverage, as in England and on the Continent. New Zealand cider compares well with “the apple wine of Hereford” and the: South and 1 West of England. There should be great possibilities of an expansion of the industry. Un fermented apple juice’is a-, healthful and delicious beverage. In Germany 50;000,000 gallons, in Switzerland 9,000,000, are drunk yearly. Drinking of such pure fruit juices, which by modern processes are

made free of preservatives, was a feature of the “Keep Fit Campaign” of the German Youth Movement. A pint of juice is stated to contain the goodness of two pounds of apples.

.Fruit research officers of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research have during the past year been experimenting in different methods of manufacturing unfermented apple juice, with satisfactory results. . An Auckland firm is already manufacturing this drink on a commercial scale. A Hawke’s Bay firm is negotiating for an English expert from'the Fruit and Cider. Institute, Bristol University, to come to New. Zealand and superintend the establishment of the industry 1 in that district.

In Canada and the United States waste apples are used also'for the manufacture of vinegar. Practically the entire supplies of household vinegar in those countries are manufactured from apples instead of from malt. At present New Zealand imports some 18.000 gallons of vinegar yearly.

Next to her apple trade, New Zealand is rich in pears. She exports some 70,000 cases a year. Peaches and apricots, plums and nectarines, come from Central Otago, Nelson, and the northern districts. Cherries grow in Canterbury and Wairarapa. In North Auckland oranges and lemons flourish. Strawberries and raspberries, currants and gooseberries, do best in the South Island. These fruits supply local needs, but beyond a small fruit drink, canning and jam trade, they are not for export. Passion fruit, tree tomatoes, persimmons, and various subtropical fruits, are grown in northern gardens, also for local use. Grapes ripen out-of-doors in the Waikato basin and Hawke’s Bay: their juice is pressed for wine