Rural News // august 6, 2013
12 news
60 years of innovation recognised with award AN ELDERLY Chinese couple, Joe and Fay Gock, who among many things pioneered an innovative system for storing kumara, are this year’s HortNZ Grower of the Year. The pair were presented with the award – the Bledisloe Cup – by Prime Minister John Key at HortNZ’s gala dinner last week.
Joe and Fay, both born in China, have been commercial growers near Mangere, Auckland, for 60 years. During that time, they have been regarded as two of the most innovative commercial growers in New Zealand. In the 1960s – in conjunction with the then DSIR – the Gocks developed a system of
storing kumaras which reduced the loss from rotting from 60% to under 1%. They also developed seedless watermelons and were the first people to put stickers on individual fruit to distinguish them from other competitors. The Gocks were also noted for the rhubarb
they grew, which is regarded as a difficult crop to grow. Joe and Fay Gock are also renowned for their work within the Chinese community and feature in a book about Chinese growers called ‘Sons of the Soil’. Ben James, of Hastings, was named Young Grower of the Year.
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New ‘Raine’ begins THE NEW president of HortNZ, Nelson fruit and berry grower Julian Raine, says he’s looking forward to his role and the challenges ahead. He told Rural News he stood for president because he felt he could offer something to horticulture and the respective product groups and fruit and vegetable grower associations that make up the organisation. Like his predecessor, Andrew Fenton, Raine Julian Raine sees the big challenge as the Resource Management Act, and the cost of doing business in New Zealand. Other challenges include getting enough good quality labour, biosecurity, country-of-origin labelling and getting the 22 product groups and HortNZ to work in sync. Raine was raised on his family’s sheep and beef and dairy farm and he still runs this. “Unfortunately, Nelson is more known as a horticulture region than a livestock region; so when I came out of university I felt I should be more upto-date and in tune with the crops that grow well in Nelson,” he says. He’s been a grower for 30 years and has apples, kiwifruit, boysenberries, blackcurrants and hops on his property. He’s a former director of the NZ Boysenberry Council and chair of the Nuffield Farming Scholarship Trust and a trustee of the Massey-Lincoln Agricultural Industry Trust. Raine says his first priority in his new role will be to oversee the completion of the ‘future focus’ report and dealing with the action points which come out of this. – Peter Burke
More floods, winds and storms coming peter burke peterb@ruralnews.co.nz
THE GOVERNMENT’S chief science advisor says farmers can expect more flooding and high wind events. Sir Peter Gluckman has just released a detailed 20-page report on climate change, which updates scientific thinking on the subject and sets out the implications of climate change for sectors including land-based industries. Gluckman says the science of climate change is complex and evolving and can be difficult for lay people and policy makers to ‘navigate’. He says in the medium term (30 – 40 years) New Zealanders, in particular farmers, will have to devise new strategies to adapt to the “expectation and frequency” of extreme events. The report warns farmers to expect more frequent severe flooding and high wind events, and with greater extremes which will affect yield and quality of produce. It also says because of the decrease in frosts, pests are more likely to survive and new exotic pests and diseases may become established. And wetter conditions in winter and spring will likely encourage “pathogen proliferation”. In regards to horticulture, the reports suggests that as the climate changes it may be possible to grow some crops now confined to northerly regions further south. This may include some grape varieties. Arable farmers will find the yield and quality of broadacre crops affected, but on the other hand warming temperatures may increase the number of growing days. Pastoral farmers may see the grass grow faster in spring, but in summer and autumn, grass growth could be reduced because of droughts. Farmers may have to shift to fastergrowing but lower-energy grass species and away from higher energy-providing traditional ryegrass.