Growers losing money on asparagus offer travel vouchers to up demand

Asparagus growers are giving away travel vouchers worth thousands of dollars to help stimulate demand for the produce.

They say that they lose money on every bunch of asparagus that is sold and they are also going back to the export market to absorb some volume, but there is no money in it.

Asparagus Growers Council president Cam Lewis said it was “pulling all the stops” to do something because the crop had been in the ground for 15 years, so he had to play the long game.

Waikato and Horowhenua are the biggest growth regions.

Lewis said demand was up 25 percent, possibly more, from expected levels.

Harvesting part of the produce was seen as the best way to maintain crop quality and avoid flooding a market where customers had less money for groceries than producers anticipated at the beginning of the season, Lewis said.

“We’re back to sales prices that we probably haven’t seen, or seen this before, for at least seven or eight years. Literally, every bunch that every asparagus grower puts out the door is losing money. Everyone’s trying to squeeze the blocks or mowing the blocks, which takes them out of production from a week to 10 days at a time… it’s a way to keep all our staff in the hope that maybe something changes. ask and people start eating a little more. Then we can turn the blocks.

“But there will be some pretty tough decisions to be made by most growers in the next week or so. Whether they continue the season or whether they literally close their blocks to keep the energy in them. [the asparagus spears] for next season and walk away, start again in September next year,” he said.

Lewis used to export asparagus to Japan on his own account, making annual visits to maintain relations with importers, but over the years it became uneconomical and uncertain. For the past two seasons, he and other growers have been exporting small quantities with Hawke’s Bay-based Gourmet Blueberries.

He said that this season had been a case of saying: “help we need to transform the product, you can help”, and even if the returns were minimal, it kept people employed.

“It’s all well and good to say that the winegrowers lose some money, we just close and go, but we have 150 staff who come to work every day, they also have to buy their groceries, we have to do well by our people or they won’t come back next year when the season is maybe better.

“Blueberries Gourmet are the biggest asparagus traders in the world, they’ve had customers all over the world buying asparagus from them, from other parts of the world and it seems they’re able to tap back into those customers now. small volumes and the money is not great, but it keeps everyone busy and put [asparagus] somewhere,” Lewis said.

As an industry, winegrowers are also dipping into long-term reserves to give green spears a boost on the local scene by offering travel vouchers.

Buy two decks and “every two weeks there’s a $5,000 travel voucher up for grabs,” Lewis said.