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Gisborne feijoas
High hopes for a Kiwi classic Though some regions are facing challenges from pests and disease, there are hopes that New Zealand’s much-loved feijoas will become a big part of the food processing sector. By KRISTINE WALSH.
A good growing season and strong domestic demand made for optimism in the feijoa sector as the 2022 harvest got underway. Gisborne’s Kaiaponi Farms has been producing feijoas for more than 20 years, both on its own orchards and for a couple of key growers. Like last year, the 2022 harvest got off to an early start – late February as opposed to early March – which fruit procurement manager David Hansen says is due to some hot days coupled with episodes of well-timed rain making for a good growing season producing nice-sized fruit. Across the 20 hectares of feijoas it oversees, Kaiaponi expects to see a 2022 harvest of around 400 tonnes, but David says that as different varieties produce fruit of different sizes, it’s hard to get that estimate spot-on.
COVER STORY
At that level, the company makes a solid contribution to the national crop... in 2019, the NZ Feijoa Growers Association’s around 140 members produced about 1,200 tonnes of fruit from 240 hectares. At that time, feijoas generated $4 million in domestic sales and $200,000 in exports. However, in recent years fall-out from the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted on exports, with most of the crop being sold on the domestic market despite an estimated 20 percent increase in volumes in 2020, numbers that were repeated in 2021. David Hansen loves feijoas – he’s even got a few trees planted on his lifestyle block, just out of Gisborne – but admits their distinctive tropical taste can be polarising, which could also explain why so many Kiwis are passionate about them.
The ORCHARDIST : APRIL 2022
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