The price crash in the macadamia nut industry has alerted farmers to the need for greater on-farm efficiencies to weather the downturn. The industry is expected to recover but is unlikely to reach the record-high prices of 2018.
Cutting unnecessary costs and evaluating the performance of every step in the production process is a necessary step towards streamlining an industry. While this process has been forced on the macadamia industry in a bid to survive tight margins, it does place it in a better position for the future.
Mark Hassenkamp, director of RedSun Hortitech, adds that the disruption in the industry has provided an opportunity to pause and reflect. “What got us here won't take us to the future and it's essential to zoom out for a panoramic view of the macadamia industry, past and present.”
An insight this panoramic view provides is that the macadamia industry has for a large part ignored genetic selection and improvement, opting instead for an ‘anything goes as long as it gets into the soil’ approach. Hassenkamp explains that the industry has unwittingly been multiplying poor-yielding genetics in the rush to get trees planted, while chasing the allure of white gold.
