The 2022/23 season was difficult before Cyclone Gabrielle arrived. Those who have followed the NZ Market Report will know that Hawke’s Bay has been wet all season combined with poor fruit set in many orchards.
We were warned that the cyclone was coming and that loose items should be tucked away. What arrived was wind and 210 mm of rain overnight. For context, the Heretaunga Plains has an 800 mm average annual rainfall. The hills around that area got 300 mm with 700 mm recorded overnight in the hills inland from Napier. This helps us begin to understand where the silt came from.
Forestry slash is not the issue it is in the Gisborne area, but here it’s with willow trees that have been used to stabilise riverbanks.
If you lived by something that is called a drain or stream, your property is probably OK. Wet but OK. If your nearest water course is a river, then the damage is likely to be significant. There are four rivers that feed into the area, the Esk which exits north of Napier; and the other three, Tutaekuri, Ngaruroro and Tukituki, which exit at Clive. They have all caused problems.
Summerfruit NZ is still working with the wider industry to fully understand the extent of damage to our sectors. However, we do know that some summerfruit orchards are totalled, as in, will not grow fruit again for some years. Other orchards will need some extra spend to bring them back to business as usual for next season, and the rest are wet but OK.
Some apple orchards are unaffected and were picking the day following the storm. It really has been a post code lottery. In places, the trees on a mature orchard have gone, completely gone, and 100 m away, a house has the gib removed to thigh high and drying out. Parts of orchards are on their sides and others in the same block still standing up.
The summerfruit harvest was all but finished. There are Golden Queens to pick for Watties’ and the fresh market plus some late plums. Apples are just starting as is the grape harvest, and kiwifruit is not too far away. These growers and their product groups are dealing with a disrupted harvest and export scenarios as well as flood damage.
Some of the first-hand stories are truly harrowing. One of our growers and his wife spent the night in the roof cavity with no communication and no idea what has going to happen. There is dead stock on roadsides or up in fruit trees. I have a photo of a mate’s house with a fruit bin on the roof – it floated up there. His house was built on raised piles but that was of little benefit. The silty goop is drying in some blocks, still wet in others and it’s raining again. I haven’t seen the places where the silt is up to the top of the posts on grape blocks in the Esk Valley, but the story has come from different sources.
Driving along Pakowhai Road is a very emotional experience as absolutely everything is a trashed, goopy and now smelly mess. The same applies in parts of Twyford, Dartmoor, Korokipo, Omaranui, Swamp Road and of course, the Esk Valley.
We are dealing with potential contamination from fuel tanks, septic tanks, chemical sheds and dead stock.
Those that are old enough may remember Cyclone Bola. For the Heretaunga Plains, this is significantly worse outcome.
As we look down the tunnel into the future, there are questions around slash which the media is highlighting; and in a similar vein, the amount of sludge that has ended up on fertile land. Erosion is a natural process, has happened before and will happen again, but if there were no stop banks, would the sand, silt and clay be spread over a wider area and not require diggers to get it out of orchards? Building your home on the orchard on a flood plain is putting all your eggs in one basket. ‘Flats are for food production and hills for homes’ has been trotted out more than once.
There is a power of work being done by the industry bodies, MPI and the Hawkes Bay Regional Council, with many of us sitting in the NZ Apples and Pears’ office as a hub. We are working together to co-ordinate the messages in conjunction with HortNZ.
Good outcomes will come out of this in time, but for now, we are trying to keep trees alive where this is a good option, and writing-off blocks that are to buried.
Richard Mills, Technical Advisor, Summerfruit NZ
27 February 2023