Glut Has New Zealand’s Kiwi Producers Reeling : Agriculture: Foreign competition has left the fruit rotting on the vine in the country that popularized it.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — The kiwi, the green fruit with a furry skin, has turned sour for New Zealand and is being left to rot on thousands of vines.
The head of the New Zealand Kiwi Marketing Board, Bruce Honeybone, announced that he was quitting, another victim of an industry that tried to turn a luxury adornment into a common fruit.
New Zealand pioneered changes in the small Chinese gooseberry in the 1970s and 1980s, renaming it the kiwi.
But the country’s success enticed other fruit growers around the world, and its market share has gradually been whittled away by countries like Chile, Italy and France.
New Zealand now produces one-third of the world’s kiwi, a sharp drop from 10 years ago, when it dominated world markets.
“Our ability to control markets for significant portions of the year is almost evaporated,†said the marketing board’s deputy chairman, John Palmer.
In the early 1980s, New Zealand growers received more than $10.80 for a tray of 40 fruit. The marketing board angered farmers last week when it told them that they would receive only $2.34 a tray.
The key European market, suffering a glut of home-grown kiwi, has collapsed. Thus, New Zealand growers have been ordered to rip out 15% of their crop to reduce annual production by 10 million trays.
Kiwi growers blame the marketing board and a strategy of exporting technology, which enabled foreigners to grow the fruit.
“The board has repeatedly provided growers with misleading and unsustainable market return indicators,†said grower Brian Jeffries.
In the boom years, many kiwi farmers became millionaires. But some have recently been forced to apply for welfare.
The industry has been further depressed by disclosures that a shipload of fruit was dumped at sea.
Adding insult to injury, some cargoes were sent to feed cattle this year after heavy snowstorms in New Zealand’s South Island. But the cattle turned up their noses at the fruit, which had to be turned into silage.
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