Mark’s Blog Apples

It’s a good thing we’re not as fussy about what comes into New Zealand as the Australians seem to be when it comes to Apples.

We could get a bit tetchy about the standard of Australian national rugby teams coming here of late. They appear to be suffering from some sort of blight. Perhaps if they ate some of our deliciously crisp Pacific Rose Apples they may be in a better state to take on the All Blacks.

But you have to hand it to them. They’ve managed use their older brother attitudes to ban our Apples since 1921. Can you believe it?  Even the famously stroppy French farmers haven’t been that successful at stopping imports.

But you have to feel for the Australian consumer. All these years they’ve missed out on they joys of munching a Kiwi Granny Smith, salivating over a Gala or gagging over a Golden Delicious. They’ve had to put up with inferior apples for nearly 90 years.

Little wonder that Aussies eat half as many apples a year as we do.

Each Australian eats 6 to 9 kilograms of apples a head a year, whereas Kiwis devour 18kg. One wonders if it has anything to do with the fact the West Islanders can’t delight in a beautiful NZ Braeburn or Pacific series apple?

They have to put up with something called a Cripps, a Jonathon or a Jonagold!

The Aussies claims that New Zealand apples carry two diseases Fireblight, and European canker and a pest, the apple-leaf-curling midge.

Whereas scientific evidence to the WTO showed that if you wash, polish, wrap and pack in cartons the apples could not be carriers.

Talk about protecting your patch.

The encouraging news is no WTO dispute decision has ever been overturned on appeal, the bad news is the appeal procedure will take up to a year.

So assuming the appeal is dismissed and any other delaying tactics booted into touch our apples could be on sale in Australia as soon as 2012.

We’re talking 500,000 cases of apples each year, yielding about $30 million.

But even better, Australia represents only about 5 per cent of the total New Zealand apple export market, and China, which has been keeping an eye on the situation,  is lying in wait to take our fine product too.

Perhaps we need to take a leaf out of the Rugby Union and send across some of our top apple people to advise Australia. Knowing how the Aussies love taking advice from Kiwis, we might end up having as much success with their apples as  Robbie Deans is having trying to improve Australian rugby.