A sharp fall in the dollar has come too late to provide any relief for stressed New Zealand pipfruit growers, facing their third consecutive season with empty pockets.

Frustration is beginning to bite as price undercutting, short changing and having no real say in their industry has forced pipfruit growers to reassess its structure.

Once one of Nelsons most lucrative export industries, last year contributing $100 million to the local economy, growers are now desperately seeking ways to change the  industry, before they have to abandon ship.

Earlier in the year, local business man John Palmer gave Nelson’s apple industry just 5 years before orchards were turned back into paddocks. 

Mr Palmer  told a Nelson-Tasman Chamber of Commerce luncheon it had got to the stage where many orchards were more valuable without their trees and would be “less of a cash drain growing grass than growing apples.”

Growers now taking charge of their own destiny have re-launched the Mahana Fruitgrowers Association

And last week 28 out of 33 Motueka growers unanimously agreed to re-start the Motueka Fruitgrowers Association.

Interim chairman Simon Easton said changes were crucial in order to survive. He says the final straw was the failed effort to vote in a Horticulture Export Authority model for the newly opened Australian apple market.

Despite voting support from 70% of growers voting the effort was thwarted by exporters and Enza, who voted against the proposal, after originally supporting it.

Mr Easton says there is a need for a grower’s voice from the grass roots.

“We have our Pipfruit organization but I don’t think it really gets to the nitty gritty growers issues like it used too. It’s a bit more of a political monster now.”

Though yet to formulate policy, Mr Easton says local growers are fed up with not being heard, as well as the current shambles in the marketplace.

“If the future means a Matueka Exporter of Nelson or Nelson Exporters group then maybe that’s the future for us and we sell under one Nelson brand. I don’t know.

“You’re going to have to get everyone to agree; I can’t speak for growers on how they feel about that.  I think there is a need for a bit more collaborative marketing in Europe, but again I can’t speak for all growers.”   

Mr Easton says that Pipfruit NZ will still be an industry body that will handle major issues like market access, but would no longer represent all growers.