While this season has faced growers with challenging weather conditions, there are exciting times ahead in which new aspects of the consumer market provide fresh opportunities for growers, according to general manager of growing, Brent Wilcox.
Brent says a 'usual' season - and 2022-23 has been far from 'usual' - the business would grow around 7000 tonnes of carrots, which represents about 15 percent of Wilcox's overall fresh vege production. About 90 percent of the carrot crop goes into the domestic fresh market, with the remainder exported to the Pacific Islands and a smaller quantity going to Asia.
The frost event in October 2022 which hit many growers in the Waikato and Bay of Plenty, didn't impact Wilcox's carrot season greatly, but the rain did, Brent explains.
''We started harvesting Pukekohe spring carrots in October. All through the spring season we had continual rain during October and November, which made getting the carrots out of the ground a struggle.”
Brent shows a printout record of local rainfall, indicating high rain days continuing right through the peak pre-Christmas supply period, which then just continued through January.
By mid-January the region had experienced about twice its usual rainfall - and that was before the Auckland Anniversary Weekend weather bomb that pushed the rain record almost off the chart.
''We've had a much wetter season than usual, which hasn’t had a high impact on our carrot crop quality, but has certainly challenged our ability to harvest and supply customers as we would have liked. We were able to move onto summer crops at Matamata and more latterly into main crop at Ohakune, the mainstay of our winter supply. The wet summer has had some impact on crop condition there, and while current product is satisfactory, if it continues to be wet into the winter it will have further deteriorating effects on quality.
''We are hoping for a cooler, drier, winter to aid holding the quality, and storage in field through until October.''
Meanwhile, on a glorious day in a field near Matamata, A S Wilcox carrots supervisor, Ben Edwards and key operator, Campbell Catchpole, were busy harvesting a 15ha field of carrots. The planting and harvesting machines are GPS (global positioning system) guided. ''Amazing bits of kit,” Ben says.
When it comes to harvesting, it's all weather-dependent. So time management has become essential to take advantage of windows of opportunity to spray and harvest during the short periods of drier weather.
