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| Under
the Canopy: Organic kiwifruit hanging heavy
although fertility is an ongoing challenge. Leo
and Diane Whittle try to replicate the kiwi's native
soil and other growing conditions for heathlier,
naturally resistant vines. |
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Posted April 1, 2003: Every stop on the
tour of Leo and Diane Whittle’s organic kiwifruit orchard
is enjoyable, but the last is the most spectacular: that’s
when Leo takes you up the steep hill at the back of the property
to a narrow plateau where you can turn and look northeast
to the Pacific Ocean.
In the distance you can see White Island out in the Bay of
Plenty, with its active volcano sending up puffs of smoke.
In the foreground you can see the neat squares of the Whittles’
and neighboring farms, the neatly trellised blocks of kiwifruit
vines framed by tall, dense shelterbelts of Japanese cedar
(Cryptomeria japonica).
In between, scattered across the landscape, you can see a
dozen or more cold storage facilities—vast, immaculate
metal warehouses surrounded by mountains of the wooden crates
in which kiwifruit are shipped around the world. Eighty percent
of New Zealand kiwifruit production—a total of 60 million
trays a year, at 3.5 kilograms a tray—is centered around
the town of Te Puke (pronounced t’ POO ky), just off
to our right, and from here you can believe it.
| ". . . the whole industry is
moving ever closer to organic . . . growers across the
spectrum have been rethinking production methods, with
IPM (integrated pest management) strategies, for instance,
now nearly universal." |
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The Whittles have been producing kiwifruit here since 1987,
and began transitioning to organic ten years later, receiving
full certification from Bio-Gro, New Zealand’s leading
organic certification group, in 2000. Their farm is “what’s
called a Darby & Joan operation,” as Leo puts it:
four ‘canopy’ hectares of kiwifruit vines, 7.4
ha altogether (about 10 acres of vines on a farm of 18 acres)—small
enough to be managed by a husband and wife team. Apart from
harvest, which requires a crew of ten for three or four days
in May, Leo, age 60, and Diane, 58, do all the work themselves.
It is a second career for both of them: trained in horticulture,
the Whittles went abroad in their late twenties, kicking around
for five years before settling down on Vancouver Island, Canada.
Leo turned to forestry, taking logging contracts and managing
a crew while Diane raised their two children. They stayed
for ten years. But they missed the New Zealand climate and
the lifestyle that goes with it, and Leo had always wanted
to try growing kiwifruit. “When the kids reached the
end of primary school, we knew it was now or never,”
he reflects. After a year’s trial period, they bought
this property with its established orchards, clearing the
least productive area to build a house.
Emerging strong from a late-80s slump in
the market
The early years weren’t easy. Twelve years ago a hurricane
ripped through the neighborhood, lifting the roof off the
water tank and dropping it in the middle of one of the canopy
blocks. They’ve also had an earthquake (the house stood),
and a heavy dusting of volcanic ash from Mount Ruapehu, 200
km (125 mi) to the south (luckily this came just after harvest,
not before).
More serious was the stagnation of the kiwifruit industry
in the late ‘80s, a reaction to rapid expansion in the
1970s and to the removal of agricultural subsidies in 1984.
But the Whittles’ perseverance has paid off: when they
bought in sixteen years ago, established kiwi orchards were
selling for around NZ$100,000/canopy hectare; now they’re
NZ$250,000/canopy hectare (a leap from about US$126,000/ac
to US$315,000/ac).
Fruit prices recovered after the industry was reorganized
in the early 1990s, so that instead of multiple kiwifruit
exporters operating independently, one company known as Zespri
acts as a single seller in the global marketplace. “Some
people refer to it as a monopoly,” Leo explains, “but
technically it’s a ‘monopsony’—they
have sole right of purchase. Eventually we realized that as
kiwi growers in New Zealand, we shouldn’t be competing
against each other. In reality, we’re competing against
kiwi producers in other countries, and beyond that against
other fruits—and beyond that against other foods people
choose to eat.” Zespri promotes kiwifruit consumption
worldwide, oversees strict quality control programs among
its producers, and works to develop new markets, as with the
recently introduced Kiwi Gold—a sweeter, smoother, yellow-fleshed
variety that already accounts for one-sixth of NZ kiwifruit
exports.
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"The biggest challenge for the
organic kiwi grower, however, is not pest control but
fertility . . . The key, Leo says, is to manage the soils
as what they were originally, bush or forest soils." |
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Production innovations
Other innovations in kiwifruit production have focused on
the layout and structuring of orchards. Kiwi vines are dioecious—they
have male and female flowers on different plants—and
in the early years of the industry growers set just one male
vine in eight in an effort to maximize the available space
for the productive female plants. Later this ratio was doubled
to one in four, as it became clear that thorough pollination
was critical to the production of top-quality fruit.
One of the first things the Whittles did was to ‘strip-male’
their orchards, making every other row fully male. Rows are
3 m (just under 10 ft) apart, with plants 5 m (16-1/2 ft)
apart in the rows; the male plants are pruned back after pollination
to give the females more space in the canopy. Next they removed
the so-called internal shelters, leaving just the Cryptomeria
hedge around the perimeter of the block. Kiwifruit vines are
very sensitive to winds, especially when they’re young,
but in established orchards the additional shelters have proven
unnecessary, and may encourage disease.
Whittle sprays Bt to control leaf-roller caterpillar and
uses a mineral oil product to suffocate a scale insect—always
spraying in the late evening to avoid harming the bees that
are brought in to pollinate. The top of every vine and trellis
standard is ringed with a band of sticky tape, about 2 cm
wide, to discourage climbing insects from entering the canopy,
and a native plant known as kawakawa (Macropiper excelsum)
has been planted at regular intervals through the orchard
because Leo believes its peppery taste helps repel the passion
vine hopper, which produces a honeydew that in turn attracts
a fungal black rot. Conventional producers also typically
apply a fungicide to arrest a fruit rot disease, Sclerotinia,
but Leo has found that this is simply not a problem in an
organic system. “I’ve been trying to convince
my neighbors about that one,” he shrugs. “I think
I’m almost there.”
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Kiwis
are a sensitive bunch: Hedgerows of Cryptomeria
border the vines to keep breezes from entering the
growing blocks--kiwis are very sensitive to wind. |
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The biggest challenge for the organic kiwi grower, however,
is not pest control but fertility. The kiwifruit vine is a
relatively heavy feeder, requiring lots of potassium as well
as nitrogen. Conventional growers rely on chemical fertilizer,
and the Whittles use a foliar seaweed product, but more importantly
they have sought to improve the soils beneath the orchard.
The key, Leo says, is to manage the soils as what they were
originally, bush or forest soils. “The kiwi is a forest
vine—its native relatives grow in the forest in China,”
Whittle points out. “Many people think of forest soils
as poor soils, but they’re not, they’re just different
from grassland soils. They can be enormously productive. They
get lots of leaf litter accumulation, and they’re fungal-dominant,
not bacterial-dominant.”
To bring out the natural properties of these soils and to
mimic the kiwifruit’s native habitat, the Whittles cultivate
a richer environment beneath the canopy. All prunings are
left to dry down where they fall, and get chopped up the next
time Leo runs the mower through (he mows the orchard just
three times a year, twice lengthwise and once crosswise).
The standing sward of rye, clovers, and fescues is increasingly
varied with herbs like dock and comfrey, which help pull nutrients
up from the subsoil.
Finally, after harvest Leo applies 5 metric tons per hectare
(or 2.23 US tons/acre) of carbon-heavy compost, cooked up
from annual trimmings from the 5-meter high Cryptomeria shelterbelt,
cuttings of the grass headlands around the orchard, and occasional
loads of fish carcasses from a local fish processor. “The
fungi accumulate on the wood chips,” Leo explains; “that’s
where they like to grow.”
The whole system is remarkably self-contained, and the results
speak for themselves: when Leo brings a spade out to the orchard
and slices out a square of earth, it’s soft, dark, and
peaty, interlaced with vine roots and with a rich earthy smell.
“I call this potting-mix soil,” he says, proudly.
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"The difference in taste between
organic and conventional kiwis, is readily apparent, the
Whittles say: organic kiwis are denser and have much more
flavor." |
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Although the fruit looks beautiful as well, Leo says it’s
been a bad year weather-wise and they expect to get just 5000
trays per canopy hectare, as opposed to their usual 7000 (about
15,600 versus 21,800 lbs/ac). Conventional growers generally
get around 10,000 trays/ha. On the other hand, organic kiwifruit
receive a price premium of around 15 percent, and the Whittles
report that they do less work now than they did as conventional
growers. In time, moreover, they believe organic yields could
overtake conventional ones. Diane observes, “We had
to say to the vines, ‘This is the way you are to eat
now.’ It’s taken some time for them to adjust.”
The difference in taste between their kiwis and conventional
kiwis, moreover, is readily apparent, the Whittles say: organic
kiwis are denser and have much more flavor.
Organic kiwi growers are leading the way
As chairman of the NZ Certified Organic Kiwifruit Association,
Leo works closely with Zespri to maintain and even raise organic
standards. Zespri is considering opening a dedicated organic
cold store facility, and sends a field officer around every
year just before harvest to collect organic fruit samples
near shelterbelt gaps or other likely points of contamination.
(It’s the fifth year of the program, and they have yet
to find any residues on organic fruit. “It says a lot
for the care and consideration of our neighbors,” notes
Diane.) Zespri has also been a leading voice in New Zealand’s
anti-GE (genetically-engineered) crops campaign, securing
a clause in the NZ government’s official report on GE,
published in 2001, which may prevent the release of any GE
horticultural crops.
| "The kiwifruit industry is leading
the horticultural sector generally, in other words, and
organic kiwi growers are at the front of the kiwi grower
pack." |
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As that position suggests, the whole industry is moving ever
closer to organic. Since 1992, when a shipment of conventional
kiwifruit going into Italy was rejected for excessive pesticide
residues, growers across the spectrum have been rethinking
production methods, with IPM (integrated pest management)
strategies, for instance, now nearly universal. Conventional
kiwi growers used to spray every three to four weeks throughout
the season; now they spray just two to three times a season.
Whittle’s been encouraging his neighbors to leave more
litter under the canopy too—“they used to go for
a bowling green under there,” he notes, “absolutely
level and clean.”
The kiwifruit industry is leading the horticultural sector
generally, in other words, and organic kiwi growers are at
the front of the kiwi grower pack. Aren’t they in danger
of eliminating their market edge over the conventional producers,
then? “We sure are,” Leo replies, grinning ruefully.
“But it’s worth it. The higher we can raise the
environmental standard for the industry as a whole—for
farming as a whole, the better.” 
Laura Sayre has been working on organic farms
and writing about agriculture since 1991.
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