Total crop losses on New Zealand’s kiwifruit crop following last week’s hailstorms have been estimated at less than five per cent.
New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated president Peter Ombler told freshinfo: “For some individual growers, losses are hugely significant and some have lost their whole crops. But from an industry perspective, it won’t have an effect on net supply or quality.”
Ombler explained that the industry’s self-funded hail insurance policy will be overstretched this year. He said: “Because of the size of this event, growers may not be fully covered. There is a pool of funding for green fruit and a pool for gold, but it will be a fine balance between helping those growers who have suffered losses from the hail while not prejudicing those growers who have not suffered losses and who are paying into the fund.”
Headlines in the New Zealand press have been concerned with the order from marketing group Zespri for withdrawal of green kiwifruit from the market in order to try to match supply and demand just before the hail struck.
Ombler said: “The crop management affects less than two per cent of the total crop and concerns managing a large crop of green fruit in potentially difficult market conditions. What we are seeing is that it makes more sense, now that some growers have experienced total crop destruction, to try to retrieve some of the better fruit that had previously been earmarked for crop management.”
Growers in New Zealand are “pretty optimistic” at this early point in their season.
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