Coastal block ideal for vegetables

Ben Scott grew up working on his father’s market garden in Marshland, Christchurch and reckons that was enough to convince him growing vegetables was the last thing he wanted to do for a living, but as it turned out, he’s still in the family business.

“Dad grew a range of different crops in Marshland, but he did everything he could to try to put me off following in his footsteps and he gave me all the toughest jobs possible,” recalls Ben, who headed for a different life in Auckland after graduation.

He was back in Christchurch a couple years later when his father’s manager suddenly left, and he offered to help out for a few days. Twenty years later he still hasn’t left, though the business has evolved and relocated since then.

Marshland was a summer-only operation – it was just too wet in winter – so when Ben heard of a block of coastal land where lettuce was being grown in winter a couple of hours north of Christchurch at Conway Flat, he saw an opportunity to expand the business.

“Tom McFarlane had started growing lettuces up here 20 years ago and proved it could be done, so we came up and took over the lease, starting on 2ha.”

That was in 2006, and a year later they bought the whole 5ha block. “We’d drive up and spend a couple of days up here and the rest of the time in Marshland.”

With his father’s health deteriorating, Ben found himself increasingly taking over management. In 2008, his father died. “Dad was one of the first people to grow broccoli in Canterbury so we carried that on as well as lettuce, and in the last seven or eight years we’ve moved into machine harvested babyleaf spinach and mesclun.”

They closed the Marshland operation and for a while leased land near Dunsandel, south of Christchurch, prior to buying a block near Southbridge. The Southbridge operation has since been sold and they have bought and converted a block at Spotswood, inland from Claverley Farm, for their summer operation. 

Winter growing is still done on the nearly frost-free land on the coast and Scottfresh have consolidated the entire operation to North Canterbury.

Ben gives credit to Horticulture New Zealand for assisting him get regional council consent to expand the operation at Claverly.

"Without the work of Horticulture New Zealand in the background it would be unlikely that the latest plan change by Environment Canterbury would have allowed for this farm to be used for vegetable growing," he says.

The team at Horticulture New Zealand put in a significant amount of work to demonstrate the environmental upside of converting this farm to horticulture, something that no doubt will benefit both the environment and other Canterbury growers in the future."

Claverley Farm is ideal for horticulture, Ben says, because of its climate and soils. “The climatic advantage was probably wasted on cattle. You do get frosts, just a wee touch usually and they’re reasonably infrequent. Occasionally it will mean you can’t harvest until 9 or 10am but they go pretty quickly.”

The free draining sandy soil is easily worked and gets progressively heavier the further away it is from the beach. “We do have stones but it’s really clay-bound pea shingle all the way to China. It drains beautifully and the small and round stones are not hard on gear.”

The property is still being developed and over the past year, old fences and tree lines have been removed to make it more horticulture friendly. Ben says he’d like to move irrigation lines too, but for now that’s on hold.

“They’re not really where we’d put them if we had a choice. We had visions of ripping them all out and putting in a new mainline and all sorts, but the price of vegetables has come back by about 45 percent (over two years) so that’s on hold for now.”

Those low returns are the biggest issue the business faces, with prices over the past 12 months or more often below the cost of production.

“Too often we lose money on every head of broccoli we sell and it’s probably often the same with lettuce too. Every grower is in the same situation and every grower is doing what they can to keep the business going,” Ben says.

“I’ve never ever seen it this low for so long, I’ve never seen it this low at this time of the year.”

Despite this, Ben says they actually have a desire to continue expanding the programme for some existing product lines. 

“Purchasing this farm was done with expansion in mind so if we don’t expand, we’re going to end up with a massive mortgage on a property that we’re not getting the utilisation out of. Short term that’s far from ideal, but long term we want to maintain our market share as well.”

He doesn’t blame supermarkets for the poor returns. “Both the supermarkets and nationwide marketing companies we work closely with have high expectations. They work with us, they come up to the farm, they understand our business, I couldn’t fault them.”

For the past 20 years Ben has effectively lived two lives, splitting his time between Christchurch and North Canterbury, but he found that just wasn’t working.

“There were several people reporting to me and it wasn’t really fair on them. I’d come up here and have all sorts of ideas and we’d talk about all sorts of things, and then I’d jump in the car and leave and they wouldn’t see me for another week.”

Recently Nick Archdale was appointed to the role of general manager, bringing many years of local and international growing experience to Scottfresh. Nick not only joins the operation with significant experience but shares Ben’s desire for sustainable growth of the business.

“I’ll still come up, but I won’t be involved in the daily operation, I’ll leave that to Nick. But I’ll be working with Nick on strategy and hopefully drive a tractor or maybe the digger, actually do stuff I enjoy and then go home to Christchurch and spend more time with the family.”

And some weekends he’ll most likely bring his children up to the farm to earn some pocket money working there, much as he did for his father. “We’re not getting much return in the way of dollars at the moment but if you can get return from seeing your children doing things like that, it makes up for it.”

 

 

Article first published in the November issue of NZGrower & Orchardist.