Horticulture New Zealand may face big changes to its funding after commercial fruit growers rejected a levy increase at the annual meeting last week.

HortNZ will lose 16% of its $2.5m yearly budget as a result of the vote, which asked growers to raise their contribution from 0.11 per cent to 0.15 per cent of sales value.

Chief Executive Peter Silcock says it’s a disappointing result, and the organisation may have to re-evaluate the services it provides.

“It’s really important that we understand what growers are saying to us. And we’ve probably got a little bit more work to do in terms of looking at some areas that growers really value and other areas that they don’t value.

"[It depends] whether that’s an understanding issue or whether they prefer someone else to do that sort of work that we’ve been doing.”

The commodity levy was enacted in 2007.

2010 was supposed to be the culmination of a three year plan to bring fruit growers’ levy rates in line with what vegetable growers pay.