KEY POINTS:
Nearly 10 years ago John Schnackenberg swapped his Queen St corporate career for a Bay of Plenty avocado orchard.
He now heads a fast-growing industry targeting a quarter of a billion dollars in value but facing growing pains of inconsistent harvests and securing export markets.
Schnackenberg's is a story with a Hollywood ring to it and he would never go back to his old life as a finance manager in Auckland. But growing avocados has not been easy.
Industry output has rocketed from 3454 tonnes in 1996-97 to 26,766 tonnes in 2007-08, with the value more than quadrupling from $15.4 million to $64.7 million.
Schnackenberg, chairman of the Avocado Growers' Association and Avocado Industry Council, has 15ha in the Bay of Plenty with about two-thirds in citrus fruit and a third in avocado.
"It's frustrating and can be unforgiving," he says.
Last season the industry started with a record crop before a storm in July devastated orchards around Whangarei with the loss of about half a million trays and many trees. Total tonnage was still up 16.5 per cent on the next biggest season of 2005-06.
But this season's crop is down nearly 50 per cent because of an alternate bearing problem which sees larger harvests followed by smaller ones.
Alternate bearing is a big worry, Schnackenberg says.
"Customers want a consistent supply, people who are in the supply chain, the packers, the harvesters, invest in a certain amount of equipment and if half of it is going to lay idle every other year it raises the cost of picking."
Alternate bearing is not a choice of growers or a consequence of disease, but the industry is yet to fully identify why orchards can vary between high and low harvests.
"I guess the moral of the story is good, consistent management - orchard practice management mitigates to a degree the natural tendency of trees to alternately bear."
Many farmers undertake the right actions but still have a problem. "That's been quite demoralising for our growers."
The challenge of managing an orchard is made greater by the fact that care can vary from one tree to the next. "There is not a prescriptive approach to avocado farming."
Last season's crop totalled 4.9 million trays but based on known plantings it is expected to rise to about 12 million trays in the 2015-16 season with a target value of $250 million, Schnackenberg says.
Export trays last season totalled 2.6 million and earned $48.5 million in markets including Australia, the United States and Japan.
The primary focus is to harvest for export, and produce that does not make it into an export tray is made available to the local market.
But it was a concern that exports accounted for only 54 per cent of the crop last season, he said. While the local market had been expected to be difficult, the effect of over-supply and variable flow was underestimated.
Last season 1.5 million trays were sold in the domestic market with 15 per cent of total production processed for oil but there is no value for the grower in producing for oil, he says.
Growers need to find processing alternatives to make the business pay, such as ultra-high-pressure treatment being used successfully in Mexico.
Such treatment kills all the bugs without using chemicals and can be used on avocados with the shell and stone removed to produce a vacuum-packed product with an extended shelf life of about five or six weeks.
Australia is historically the biggest market for New Zealand avocados. But with its own industry growing it could drop from taking at times 90 per cent of the export crop to about a third in five or six years, Schnackenberg says.
But Japan has substantial potential. It might take about 150,000 trays this year but could easily grow to a million.
And although the US will not get any fruit this year because of the lower crop, it is a phenomenal marketplace which has grown 10 to 20 per cent year-on-year and shows no sign of abating.
Despite all the challenges of growing and selling avocados, there is something that appeals to farmers about the gnarly skinned fruit with a soft heart.
Sexy is not quite the right word but Schnackenberg fishes for something similar.
"It is a lovely fruit, there's something majestic about the trees and to have a substantial grove or orchard of avocado trees, it's like a forest."
* Aztec Viagra
The histories of human beings and avocados have been intertwined for millennia.
In fact behind any great human achievement you'll find an avocado.
All right, so that's a tiny exaggeration, but according to that cyberspace font of all knowledge Wikipedia, the evidence of cultivation in Mexico dates back 10,000 years.
Avocados are deemed a berry and come from trees that can grow 20m tall and produce 120 fruits a year.
They have 60 per cent more potassium than a banana, are rich in vitamins, have the highest fibre content of all fruits and their fat is mainly monounsaturated.
They are also known as a butter pear or an alligator pear.
According to Wikipedia the Aztecs referred to the avocado as "the fertility fruit", while for some it held a stigma as a sexual stimulant to be avoided by those wanting to appear chaste.
Perhaps yesteryear's stigma could become this year's sales pitch - candlelight, soft music, fine wine and avocados. It's business time.
Avocado itself comes from the Nahuatl word "ahuacatl" meaning ... testicle. You just had to ask.
