New Zealand Program Aims for Higher Yields

This year looks to bring great progress to New Zealand’s Focus Grove Project, an ini­tia­tive aim­ing to ​“increase the mar­ket share for locally pro­duced olive oil by iden­ti­fy­ing basic grove man­age­ment prac­tices to enable the indus­try to con­sis­tently lift the pro­duc­tiv­ity of fruit per hectare and thus also reduce costs.”

The project to increase the mar­ket share for Kiwi olive oil will run until late next year and hopes to improve olive grove man­age­ment prac­tices using financ­ing from the Sustainable Farming Fund and mem­bers of Olives New Zealand as well as pri­vate dona­tions.

Typically, New Zealand pro­duced olive oil makes up less than 10 per­cent of the local mar­ket share, with the coun­try con­sum­ing a respectable 4 mil­lion liters of olive oil annu­ally (of which imported oil makes up the major­ity).

New Zealand’s 400,000 plus trees are capa­ble of pro­duc­ing at least half that amount, but the cur­rent pro­duc­tion makes up less than a quar­ter of that fig­ure — leav­ing a siz­able gap in pro­duc­tion.

While local pro­duc­ers have made efforts in the past to try increase yield, fac­tors such as dis­ease and poor weather con­di­tions have cre­ated obsta­cles. The Focus Grove Project, there­fore, hopes to increase pro­duc­tion by tack­ling pro­duc­tiv­ity issues as well as cost struc­tures.

Researchers behind the group sug­gest that efforts should be made to con­trol wet weather leaf fun­gus dis­eases in order to retain healthy leaves and improve growth, fruit and flow­er­ing in the future. Better prun­ing of the trees has been rec­om­mended in order to size and shape each tree to get the max­i­mum amount of required sun­light within each canopy.

In November last year, the first review and rec­om­men­da­tions were made after site vis­its, with a goal set to increase pro­duc­tion by 10 kg per tree. During these vis­its, project con­sul­tants also held Field Days, where local olive grow­ers could get advice on spray­ing pro­grams and prun­ing meth­ods, and advice on how to avoid on-off cycles as well as bet­ter dis­ease con­trol prac­tices.

Later this year, the sites will be revis­ited to see if each is on track to reach its goal.

Gayle Sheridan, the exec­u­tive offi­cer of Olives New Zealand told Olive Oil Times the project is pro­gress­ing as expected. ​“With the Focus Groves now into their sec­ond year of fol­low­ing the rec­om­mended pro­gram of canopy man­age­ment and dis­ease man­age­ment, we are see­ing their har­vest ton­nage achiev­ing 15 to 20kg per tree com­pared with less than 10kg which is the national aver­age. Along with the increase in pro­duc­tion, there has been a reduc­tion in pro­duc­tion costs because of bet­ter economies of scale, Sheridan said.”

If all goes as plan, the project hopes to see increases in pro­duc­tion per tree from 10kg to 15kg per tree in September, with the final vis­its and reviews tak­ing place in March 2018.

• Olives New Zealand First Project Report