POMEWEST travel report

HARVESTING NEW PERSPECTIVES 

from Nannup to the UK

James Scott of Nannup Fresh Fruit spent 6 months earlier this year in the UK working for AC Hulme Farming (ACH) in Kent during the northern hemisphere summer period and leading up to harvest. He shares the following insights into the experience.

Words James Scott, Grower, Nannup Fresh Fruit

ACH Farming is a major player in the top fruit industry in the UK, spread over 500 acres of orchards owned by the Hulme family they are one of the top 5 fruit growing operations in the UK. ACH has an exclusive supply contract with LIDL and a significant amount of contract packing is undertaken to bolster the operation.

The whole expanse of the farms covers 4,000 acres, with the rest being arable cropping and cattle grazing, with plantings of asparagus and wine grapes now being established as well to add to the operation’s diversity.

The main part of the orcharding business is apples and pears, with the main apple varieties being Jugala, Gala, Cabaret, Cameo, Magic Star and Braeburn, with new plantings of Pink Lady (Lady In Red, but called Szeckzi in Europe), coming into production in the next few years. The main pear variety is overwhelmingly Conference, with only a small block of Migo pears being the only difference. The apples are for the most part all planted on M9 rootstock, with most growers preferring the M series rootstocks due to their local breeding at East Malling Research centre (Now called NIAB).

The focus points when it comes to production in this operation is high yielding, big blocks that provide a large volume of fruit when it comes to picking. The main block style for apples currently is still a single leader tree, growing to be about 2.7 m tall (They are cut to this height with a hedger). Growing on 3.5 m rows, with a target of between 24–30 main branches per tree. There are some small new developments of twin leader Braeburn trees, but this system has not been widely rolled out. The pears are grown mostly on an Open Tatura, quad leader trellis, with some other smaller plantings of old standalone trees.

From the start of the season, data is collected weekly on the progress of fruit development. With a significant focus on collecting as much data as possible, all blocks will have thorough fruit counts undertaken to decide the best chemical thinning strategy, which in the current season was a large application of Brevis®. Further fruit sizing and fruit counts are taken to determine hand thinning. This is tracked as crop development per hectare rather than outright tree counts and thinning occurs a little later than we would in WA. On this particular property they were targeting a smaller piece of fruit than we would, opting for the 64mm to 70mm range rather than our target of 73–76 mm, to satisfy the buyers expectations.

Growing fruit in the UK is not without its own challenges.

Disease and bacteria pressure is extreme compared to our little corner of southwest WA, with the main culprits being Apple Scab and Canker, as well as significant pressure from pear sucker and wooly aphid (which aid the spread of canker). This meant that all orchards were sprayed a minimum of once per week, which meant having 3 sprayers running for 6 days per week, including 2 triple row Munckhof sprayers, which made for timely and efficient spraying in tight windows between frequent showers. They also have a much bigger problem with very prevalent orchard replant disease, meaning operations are usually quite spread out due to a lack of clean ground, or trees are grafted where viable to avoid this.

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The staffing was mostly Kyrgyzstani and Uzbekistani workers, with a mixture of Eastern European supervisors. They all operate on a similar system to the Australia PALM scheme. The workers stay for 6 months, work as much as possible in the time, then return home when picking season has finished. It works well for their system, although I found the English to Russian language barrier quite hard to manage sometimes.

It certainly was an experience for a young farmer from WA, certainly being one that will help shape some of my career in the pome fruit industry going forward. In all of this, I have to thank Tom Hulme and Paul Hamlyn for their patience and great efforts of teaching me the ways of UK fruit growing, especially now amongst extremely trying industry conditions that have been placed upon the whole farming industry in the UK.