Liam Dann: Hairyberry has strength to conquer disease

Photo / Bay of Plenty Times

We almost called it the hairyberry ... or so the story used to go.

Sandwiched between chinese gooseberry and the world-beating moniker "kiwifruit", it was never a name that was going to get that funny oval-shaped thing on to the plates of Californian billionaires or Japanese businessmen.

But - with the possible exception of the national rugby team - kiwifruit has been New Zealand's greatest marketing success.

We took a fruit that had previously been an exotic oddity and catapulted it into the big league of apples and bananas.

Okay, for some reason we failed to take ownership of the trademark and licensing rights around its name and so missed the opportunity to make it a commercial brand.

Thankfully, better late than never, the industry (which has been around in some form since 1904) created its own brand in 1997.

Zespri and the co-operative export company that it represents have hardly put a foot wrong since.

The industry has grown in value from less than $500 million in 2000 to $1.1 billion last year - an annual growth rate of nearly 10 per cent.

Zespri has successfully bred, branded and trademarked the Gold variety. It has also developed a successful organic brand and continues to work on new and potentially lucrative varieties.

There has some been debate about how well the industry is served by having one such dominant player. Tony Gibbs from rival company Turners and Growers would argue that having a second exporter in the sector could bring valuable new capital to the industry.

But these are the kind of intense scraps that go on all the time in the world of agri-business. Compared with meat, wool and dairy, the kiwifruit story has been a lovefest.

The wool sector's industry bodies have splintered more times than the Judean Popular People's Front. In the dairy sector, tales of battles fought during 1990s - when a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions led to the formation of Fonterra - are now recalled as if they are scenes from There Will Be Blood.

Anyone in the agricultural and horticultural sector will tell you it's no place for the fainthearted. If it's not the politics causing concern, it's the currency or the markets or the weather.

But of all the obstacles farmers and growers face, none are talked about in more dreaded tones than the potential outbreak of disease. Now is a tense time for those in the Bay of Plenty who have built their lives around this distinctly Kiwi variety of an ancient fruit.

The kiwifruit is taonga and the industry must be saved and protected, even if the damage from this disease is much heavier than we all hope it will turn out to be.

But there is every reason to be hopeful that is not the case. The most promising theory is that we may have had this bacterium for some time - maybe years - without it thriving and doing noticeable damage to the vines.

That would probably be a best-case scenario. Between that and the worst-case scenario (the Italian outcome, whereby 25 and 35 per cent of vines had to be destroyed) there are a range of scenarios which this industry is strong enough to endure.

Thus far there have been no threats by international markets to ban the fruit and hopefully the dynamic of the global industry is good natured enough that this rational state of affairs endures.

The experience the nation's apple growers have had with our supposed allies in Australia only heightens fears about the capacity for trading partners to wilfully ignore science to their own ends.

Meanwhile, officials have an unenviable task of processing scientific data at pace and trying to assess the best course of action.

As Zespri, chief executive Lain Jager said this week: "We are under enormous pressure to make very challenging decisions."

Getting conclusive scientific results takes time, but the industry has little of that with pollination for the next season scheduled to get under way.

This industry has overcome big challenges before and we should trust they can do it again.

twitter.com/liamdann