March 22, 2023
Kumara crop halved by flooding
Expect to see very few, very expensive kumara on supermarket shelves this year.
The country’s main kumara growing area around the northern Kaipara was hard hit by the summer’s storms.
Antony Thompson, the operations manager for Te Runanga o Ngati Whatua, says there was widespread flooding hit just as growers were about to harvest.
Up to 60 percent of the crop may have been lost.
“There are some farmers who have lost whole crops and kumara rot has started to infest which means there crops are damaged. We don’t expect a lot of kumara on the shelves this year and the kumara we will see will be very expensive and a lot of it will probably end up in export and very little on the shelves,” he says.
Mr Thomson says dairy and dry stock farmers were also hit hard.