Hop growers picking up the pieces after hail stripped vines bare

Tuesday, 29 December 2020

Brent McGlashen, of Mac Hops in Lower Moutere, west of Nelson, with hop vines shredded in a Boxing Day hail storm.

Hop growers in the Motueka area are counting the costs of the area’s freak Boxing Day hail storm, with estimates that more than half the crop has been destroyed on some farms.

The hail storm damaged dozens of businesses in the town, west of Nelson, wiped out up to 100 per cent of some fruit-growers’ crops in Moutere, Motueka and Riwaka, and left a market gardening couple scrambling for cover as a mini-tornado tore up their glasshouse.

The losses have been estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, but the full impact will take time to assess.

Lower Moutere grower Brent McGlashen said his farm, Mac Hops, was one of the five to six hop farms that were hit hardest by the storm.

“It’s the worst hail storm this area has ever seen, that intensity. In some areas it was over 100mm thick [on the ground].”

Brent McGlashen said some of his Moutere hops were a complete write-off after they were shredded by hail on Boxing Day.

* Couple run for cover as tornado tears through glass house ahead of hail storm

Hail stones the size of $1 coins shredded growing hops in Motueka, doling out untold millions of dollars in damage to the region.

* New Zealand hop growers investing $20m in the expanding industry

McGlashen said the damage might not be obvious to the casual observer as the season progresses, because leaves may grow back on the vines. But new growth that would normally lead to hops being harvested in March had been “ripped off”, leading to, at best, a “serious yield reduction”.

“There will be some [blocks] that are completely stripped bare,” he said.

“The hail’s topped them. It's short back and sides.”

McGlashen said he and the other hard-hit hop-growers would be lucky if they managed to harvest 50 per cent of their expected crop.

“It's a real shame because New Zealand hops and this community of growers is getting real traction in the international industry. We need as many hops as possible going into the international market.

“We're just happy it wasn't the whole area that got hit, if it was all out in Tapawera as well that would be very bad for the New Zealand brand.”

Early estimates have put the damage caused by the Boxing Day storm to farms and businesses in the Motueka area in the tens of millions of dollars.

He said some of the less-shredded hop vines may be salvageable, but there would be “quite a bit that's just going to be taken down and burnt”.

Even vines that retained healthy leaf growth had had “95 per cent” of the productive branching tips pulverised.

He said the combined damage to hops, fruit, and businesses were a massive blow for the wider Motueka area.

New Zealand Hops chief executive Craig Orr said it was “definitely going to be a lean year” for growers in Motueka after vines were shredded by hail.

“I don’t think the community understands yet what a hit this is. .”

He said it was still too early to put a financial figure on the damaged hops.

“It's just one of those things … that's just farming, you pick up and get on with it.”

New Zealand Hops chief executive Craig Orr said it was still too early to tell the full extent of the damage, but he knew of six farms which had been badly hit, two of them quite severely.

He said a more accurate assessment of the damage would require a “row-by-row inspection”, and would take a week or longer.

“It is a bit of a disaster for Motueka.

“There’s a few hectares that have just been stripped, there's nothing there.”

Tasman District Mayor Tim King said the region had plenty of practise recovering from disasters. “We will get through this as well.”

He said he wasn’t expecting a shortfall in terms of contractual obligations to beer brewers, but the expected surplus would likely not eventuate, though there was some time left for potential recovery.

“It's definitely going to be a lean year for that region, I really feel for that region, not just the hops but the fruit growers as well,” he said.

“Last year we did have a significant surplus that we sold on throughout the year, the first projection this year was looking to be the same.

“Given that it [the storm] was now, in December, we've still got a bit of time for what could be marginal growth … in a month’s time it would have been disastrous. It's just a real shame for those growers.”

Since different crops of hops are planted and harvested at different times, he said some varieties, like the new Nectaron, were completely unaffected. Unfortunately, some of the most popular varieties are the early ones growing now.

“The one that has the widest distribution, Nelson Sauvin, has been hit the hardest.”

Tasman Mayor Tim King said he said had been speaking to growers and industry groups since Boxing Day, but the long-term effects would not become clear for some time yet.

He said though it was “obviously a significant event” which had hit growers from Motueka and the Waimea Plains, the true extent of the damage would take time to reveal itself, as crops not completely destroyed could take days to show bruises, and it might be possible to thin out damaged crops from healthy ones.

“It will take several days to figure out how extensive the damage is … and obviously there are downstream consequences.

“Eighty per cent of harvest-related people come from elsewhere, but 80 per cent of post-harvest workers are local, and those are long-term jobs.”

King said speaking about the latest summer disaster to hit the Tasman region had felt quite surreal.

“It’s kind of hard to believe, I'm talking to the same people I've talked to about fires and floods and the pandemic. This time of year seems to becoming a regular thing.”

He said that while this was something that “we could really do without”, the region had plenty of practice recovering from disaster.

“This is something we’ve dealt with before as a region, and we will get through this as well.”