Welcome to our summer newsletter,
The team is in full harvest mode with everyone along the chain working to full capacity to ensure we get through the huge bin number weeks we have ahead, smoothly. Thank you to everyone for their efforts and especially the team at the Just Avocado packhouse in Katikati who have had some huge weeks recently.
Communication is key at this time, so please ensure you are communicating well with your contractors and our team – the onus is also on those parties to be communicating well with you also. If you are having any issues, please let the team know so we can get on top of it quickly.
Tree health, as a major driver of productivity and profitability, is a huge focus of ours and the current fruitset period is a critical time to ensure your tree is in balance nutritionally. Erica shares an in-depth article on pages 6-8 on the must do’s for tree health at this time.
Moisture management is also another important consideration as we head into potentially another long dry summer.
Those without irrigation need to consider the lost opportunity with regards to their tree health and potential subsequent lower productivity, higher fruit drop, and small fruit sizing just to name a few outcomes of water stress. Those with irrigation need to ensure they are using it properly. John shares a few words on soil moisture on page 5 and we have a video for you to refer to in our Facebook group (Just Avocados Growers) of our last workshop which was on irrigation systems and moisture management.
The importance, or more the convenience, of irrigation is also highlighted in our feature article on one to two-year-old developments. Those growers who hadn’t considered installing irrigation before planting, found out the hard way the difficulty of hand watering a high-density development throughout summer.
Also, inside the following pages, John and Kyra give a roundup of what’s happening in the growing regions; Jacob updates us on export market activity and export pool finalisation, and Jude details some important reminders for the GLOBALG.A.P. food safety programme.
We had planned to catch up with growers socially pre-Christmas, but adverse weather and everyone being flat out with the job at hand has meant we made the decision to hold these events in the New Year when the weather is more settled, and we can celebrate the end of harvest for most of our growers.
Happy reading and best wishes for the holiday season.
Regards,
Andrew Darling