HGANZ – Chair’s report for the year ended June 2024
At last year’s AGM in June, we took the step of increasing the subs because the
committee recognized the need to employ a part time executive officer if we were to
ever make progress on the industries goals. Fortunately, this was supported by
those present at the AGM.
By that August we had identified and were in the position of contracting Christine
Robinson as a part time Executive Officer for the Hazelnut Growers Association.
Chris has a PhD in plant pathology and has been busy raising a family. She has
worked on a casual basis on my orchard and was keen to pick up some part time
work to advance the Hazelnut Industry. Chris lives in Springston in Canterbury.
Chris is getting up to speed on our issues and the historical work by the committee
and previous secretary. In summary Chris has been;
- Sorting out and organizing the Dropbox where all the HGANZ information is
stored. This includes making a reference list of the papers that we hold. - Searching for gross margin data for other Ag and Hort crops so we can get a
feel for where Hazelnuts sit financially compared to other land use options. - Searching for grants for R&D funds or general support to try and advance
Hazelnuts as an industry. - Indexing Newsletter content, previous field days, articles, recipes etc.
- Redesigning the WordPress website to make it look more modern and
easier for members to navigate. - Producing the newsletters.
- Summarising historical information into an Industry fact sheet.
- Organising the winter field days and AGM.
- Attending the committee meetings, taking minutes and following up on
actions. - Answering queries from members.
- Following up on our 2022 field day to determine the outcomes from growers
that may have tried the severe pruning advocated by Clive at that session.
One of the key issues we face in trying is to scale up our support for the industry is to
find sufficient funding for more research and extension. Small industries like
Hazelnuts tend to fall through the cracks in terms of government support. We don’t
have enough funding to match R&D funds like MPI’s SFFF funding, and we don’t
qualify for any of the types of grants that Callaghan provides to companies. Also as
you know economic times are very tough, so to date we have not uncovered any
suitable funds with which to leverage up our modest bank account.
I have had interactions with Muka Tangata a government workforce planning
organization. They were wanting to engage with the nut industries to understand
what our labour needs were. I had a couple of Zoom calls with them. These
emphasized that our industry was still small and dominated by owner operators and
casual employees. Skill sets were not particularly different to other horticultural
operations with the need for a good attitude, H&S awareness, good hygiene and
willingness to persevere with repetitive tasks.
I also engaged with Anna Rathe from Horticulture NZ who was pulling together what
is called the Aotearoa Horticulture Action Plan. This is an ambition plan for the
horticulture sector to grow from $6bn to $12bn by 2035. Anna was doing a stock
take of actions that various sectors of horticulture were taking to boost their sectors
growth. I pointed out the small and unfunded nature of our industry. I gave her
some overview of where we would like to go, but pointed out that resources were
currently limited. But at least we are in the National Stock take.
Your committee has also been working on;
Redrafting the constitution
Organising last winters seminar series
Re organizing banking signatories
As mentioned in the last newsletter last August when I was still CEO at Lincoln
Agritech I travelled to Australia for a two day workshop with Australian industry
representatives, and multiple research providers to look at the research needs for
the Australian Hazelnut Industry. Lincoln Agritech was one of the successful
research providers to win a $50k per annum contract over 5 years to measure flower
development and pollinations rates and relate them to final yields, using image
processing and A.I. This will be potentially useful information for us here, as well as
it will lift the skill level of Lincoln Agritech to work on Hazelnuts. One observation of
that trip was how well resourced the Australian hazelnuts growers were, and given
their funding of an executive officer Trevor Ranford over several years, how much
progress they had made in pulling together a blueprint for the development of their
industry as well as grower help sheets and research plans. I am sure that this
helped them secure funding from the federal government to advance their industry.
The R&D needs for the industry have been weighing on my mind and I have
engaged several times with Associate Professor Clive Kaiser from Lincoln University.
His expertise is in horticulture, and while not an expert yet on Hazelnuts, his
understanding of agronomy and basic scientific principles are of huge value to our
industry. We will keep trying to find funding to be able to engage Clive on a more
frequent basis to help us advance our R&D. The first task is to understand and have
a clear plan about what research we want to do. I will present some thoughts later
on at this AGM, but I plan to develop along with the committee and you as members
a comprehensive R&D plan.
The recent harvest was easier with the dryer conditions compared with the previous
year. This has also resulted in good quality nuts. We plan a post harvest survey to
try and understand how peoples yields are going. In discussions with one of the
processors demand for NZ grown Hazelnuts is still strong which bodes well for the
industry.
I would like to thank our voluntary committee for their efforts during the year. I would also like to thank Chris for her work , wish her a speedy recovery from COVID and look forward to her adding considerable value to the industry in the years to come.
Peter Barrowclough
Chair
Hazelnut Growers Association of NZ