NZ: Food-show TV great for tomato growers

A cultural shift from munching pre-packed TV dinners to picking up tips from MasterChef cooking programmes is good for business, says tomato grower Ben Smith. Smith is grower manager at Status Produce, which has three glasshouses in the Auckland area and produces nine million to 10 million kg of tomatoes a year. Previously there had been a broad consumer trend towards TV dinners. "Now we've got the counter to that, we've got the MasterChef people out there that love cooking at home and that really helps with uptake of some of these neat new products that are available." Status Produce, a subsidiary of Turners & Growers, has finished research on a grape-like sweet tomato called Angel that will go into production mid-month, Smith says, and is close to full commercialisation of a mixed tomato pack with varieties of different colours and shapes.

"That's really quite exciting for the industry as well, to have some of these new varieties coming through." Consumer attitudes have changed with greater interest in fresh produce and cooking. "That's good from my point of view because it means we're not just having a ding-dong about price," Smith says."I can start developing things that are really high in flavour and that sort of thing, which [was] very tough to do when in the past all consumers wanted to do was pay less for it." Status Produce harvests tomatoes all year with about four fruit a week per square metre of glasshouse in winter, up to about 12 in summer. Normally in winter there is a lot of Australian product in New Zealand, but events including floods and cyclones wiped out a fair proportion of their crops, with the flow-on effect being no Australian imports, which pushed up winter prices. But this summer there was so much fruit available that tomatoes are extraordinarily cheap for the time of year, Smith says.

"We've had all the extremes of pricing all in one year," he says. "I think people have not really cottoned on to the fact they are as cheap as they are at the moment." Eating tomatoes every day comes with the job for Smith."If I ever get prostate cancer this whole theory about tomatoes preventing it is completely out of the water because the amount I go through is colossal," he says. "It's a lot of eating for business, actually, but there's not a lot of downside to it." Smith, 29, studied horticultural science at Massey University with about half his fees paid by Status Produce and last year was named Young Grower of the Year and the Young Horticulturist of the Year. He left university about nine years ago as the only person in his class to graduate in horticultural science and although student numbers have picked up he is not convinced it is enough. A reputation for being a "bunch of numpties on tractors with straw hats" is not deserved and his job is science-based and technical, Smith says. "You can't just fire a crop in a greenhouse and hope for the best.

"Getting these types of people into our industry has been a real challenge because it doesn't have that same ... sexy image as being a doctor or a lawyer or something." The guts of the market for Status Produce is local although in summer its exports include the Pacific Islands, Australia, North America and Asia. Challenges facing the industry include a need to keep focused on biosecurity, Smith says. Australia has a fruit fly that is not found in New Zealand. "Are we really satisfied that we're not going to import this thing to New Zealand on something we're bringing over here?" The impact of the fruit fly would be colossal, he says. "Not only from the point of view that it will affect our crops, but our export markets will in turn close their borders to us."

Source: nzherald.co.nz