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Fresh Tomato Product Group update for July 2009
2009-07-06
Annual Conference
This year’s Fresh Tomato Annual Conference is being held Tuesday 21 July 2009
10.30am – 5.00pm in the Christchurch Convention Centre. As usual it is followed on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 June by the Horticulture NZ Annual Conference.
The HortNZ Conference programme is available at the Horticulture NZ website at www.hortnz.co.nz, go to the Conferences tab on the home page and click on Conference 2009.
Registration – The Fresh Tomato Product Group will pay the daily registration fee for all fresh tomato growers attending conference. The daily fee includes lunch. You do need to register if you are intending to come to conference. You can do this via the Horticulture NZ website at www.hortnz.co.nz and go to the Conferences tab on the home page or ring Jo at the office on 0508 467 869 to get a manual registration form sent to you.
The Fresh Tomato Conference programme is:
10.30AM Welcome & Introductions
10.35AM Chairman’s Address – Tony Ivicevich
Election of new Chairman and Confirmation of Committee elections
10.50AM Annual Report, Annual Accounts 2008/2009 and Budget 2009/2010
11.00AM Sustainable Psyllid Management
A Technical session with invited grower and consultant presenters
12.00 noon Dentrification of nutrient solution
A small scale commercial filter system
Jason Park NIWA with Neil Yearbury Grower
12.30 - 1.30PM Lunch
1.30 New Zealand’s approach to Biosecurity
Surveillance, incursion response, imports and market access.
Tim Knox Director Border Standards
Jointly with Fresh Vegetable Product Group
2.15PM Carbon footprinting in the market place
Gareth Edward-Jones Professor of Agriculture and Land Use studies Bangor University Wales UK
Jointly with Fresh Vegetable Product Group
3.00 Afternoon Tea
3.30PM General Business
Grower only session
Honoraria report
4.00PM Investing in our people for the future
A panel discussion with invited grower and industry HR presenters. Jointly with Potatoes NZ and Process Vegetable Product Group
5.00PM Conference concludes
Market Access
Pre-clearance with mandatory fumigation and other production and compliance controls under the Australian emergency measures ceased at the end of April with the departure of the last AQIS inspector.
On Thursday 7 May Biosecurity Australia released its ‘Draft pest risk analysis report for Candidatus Liberibacter psyllaurous…’ for a 30 day public comment period.
The PRA covers 4 pathways; i.e. fresh fruit (including seed), potato tubers, nursery stock and the tomato/potato psyllid. The web link to the PRA is:
http://www.daff.gov.au/ba/reviews/current-plant/candidatus_liberibacter_psyllaurous
Overall the conditions are not too bad - preclearance has been removed, fumigation is removed for loose tomatoes and tamarillos, fumigation remains for capsicums but is probably a stumbling block for truss tomatoes.
The main area of probable concern with regards to the measures is the section on registration of export greenhouses and fields where the PRA requires production site and packhouse registration and appropriate pest management approved by the NPPO "to manage pests and diseases of quarantine concern to Australia" which is a much wider scope than just control of psyllid. The approval of pest management systems is a concern because of the level of involvement that MAF would be required to have in determination and verification of "appropriate pest management".
Industry’s technical advisors Market Access Solutionz is compiling a submission of technical comments that will be passed to MAFBNZ before the end of May and they should be incorporated into MAF’s submission to Biosecurity Australia that is due by 5 June 2009.
There will be a significant period of time needed yet (perhaps 3 months?) to allow Biosecurity Australia time to assess all the submissions and to issue its final PRA. For our Industry we need to see the permanent measures in place, rather than emergency ones, before the next export season commences in October.
Exports
Exports for March were 355,553kgs valued at FOB NZ$1.04million. For year to the end of March the figures are: 1,580,717kgs and $4.14million.
The Dutch up the ante on ‘world’s best practice’
Since the Dutch government announced its aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent, grower co-operatives, such as The Greenery, have taken up the issue as part of their production and marketing strategies.
With rising fuel prices and pressure from environmental issues, the industry has been striving to produce the most energy-efficient greenhouse systems for some time, but now the process has been accelerated by government intervention.
In June last year, the Dutch government issued a new policy document, entitled the Clean and Efficient Programme: New Energy for Climate Policy. The targets of the new policy are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent compared to 1990’s levels; see a rate of energy efficiency improvement of two per cent a year; and to push the share of renewable energy to 20 per cent by 2020.
The national programme for 2020 has made energy efficiency the top priority now and, from that year, all new greenhouse developments will have to be energy neutral and economically viable. It has given a lot of projects a new focus and priority, as well as involving the Wageningen University on research into using solar energy, closed greenhouses, combined heat and gas and biofuels, to mention a few.
The growers’ co-operative, The Greenery and others have been working on producing energy-efficient plants, which would use less energy, water and heat to grow than conventional varieties. The Greenery hopes to have the first energy-efficient variety, which also produces a high yield and good eating quality, available by 2010.