Kiwifruit orcharding remains a viable business for small growers, despite rising costs.

That’s the view of Rod Calver, who has retired after a 41 years in the industry.

Rod won a Kellogg Rural Leadership Scholarship in 1982 and was a strong advocate of, and examiner for the horticultural cadet scheme. “We had up to 70 cadets, many of them now leaders within the industry.”

Industry crisis
The Calver orchard survived the bleak years between 1987 and 1989 when the kiwifruit industry came close to collapsing because of unstable interest rates and exchange rates and increased world supplies of kiwifruit led to an industry crisis.

By that time Rod was playing a leading role in the Katikati Fruitgrowers Association, going on to become president and is now a life member. “Katikati growers had a reputation in the industry for being stirrers and there was some rivalry between us and Te Puke.”

Rod was among those from Katikati who promoted a proposal that the industry investigate establishing a single desk marketing system. Although the idea was initially rejected it was finally accepted at an annual general meeting at Baycourt. The result was the establishment of the New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board in 1988 with monopoly powers to distribute and market kiwifruit everywhere except Australia. In 2000 it adopted the corporate identity Zespri International Ltd.

Orchardist award
It is a point of pride for Rod that he won the BOP Fruitpackers Orchardist of the year Mace Silliborne Memorial Trophy twice, in 1995 and 1996. “I don’t think Te Puke growers were too impressed with it going to a Katikati grower.” The Calver orchard was producing 12,500 trays a hectare of green Hayward kiwifruit on T-bar structures.

After 20 years of orcharding, Rod made the hard decision to sell the orchard to give himself and his wife MaryAnne more time to enjoy their other interests, which include horse trekking. “In 1998 we had our first horse trek in Australia and it was wonderful.”

The couple were by then living on the grazing block in Lindemann Road they call Aberfeldy.

Rod couldn’t quite cut his industry ties and in 2002 joined the post-harvest company Aongatete as horticultural manager eventually becoming part of a team of grower services representatives.

Rod, who retired from the Aongatete team earlier this year, clearly remembers the industry’s reaction to spring frosts in 2003 when post-harvest companies and orchardists hired helicopters to fly through the night, creating down drafts of warmer air to stop the frost settling. “It was crazy. There were helicopters everywhere, flying low, in total darkness, I’ll never understand why there wasn’t an accident.”

Night flights
Those night aerial assaults were rapidly replaced with other frost protection system, mostly using irrigation to cover the canopies and fruit with water.

Of all the challenges the industry was faced, the bacterial disease Psa-V first discovered in Te Puke in 2010 was potentially the most devastating. However, Rod remained optimistic the industry would pull through.

It was the industry’s united structure which also gave Rod confidence that it could pull through. A fragmented industry would not have done so he believes.

Today his only remaining official tie with the industry is as a Zespri Ambassador, looking after visiting international trade and media groups hosted by the marketer.

Rod’s optimism in the face of adversity is a hallmark of his life and no doubt stems from the hard lessons learned from losing his father when he was so young. It helped him through tough times as an orchardist and on a personal level when he fractured his spine in a horse riding accident in 1993. “I was two months in hospital and then had to learn to walk again.”

More recently he’s battled cancer, but refuses to let injury or illness stop him riding horses and pushbikes, travelling, entertaining guests with MaryAnne at their homestay, enjoying their extended family and taking a keen interest in horticultural and agricultural industries.