It's time to put kūmara back on the menu — with prices just a third of where they were last year. Hilary Barry travelled to Dargaville, where the harvest is underway, to see how growers are recovering from last year's cyclone.
In Northland, where 97% of kūmara is grown, weather conditions have been perfect for picking, which has been underway since late summer.
The heavy rains from Cyclone Gabrielle in late January and a subsequent breach of the Wairoa River saw many growers lose their entire crop, others a substantial part of it.
"We managed to harvest just under 30% of our crop," said Dargaville grower Andre de Bruin. "There's a lot of our growers who lost everything."
De Bruin said the good news was that the flooded Wairoa River didn't leave much silt behind and the soil could re-generate to enable a good season this year.
Kūmara has one harvest each year and most of the product went into cool storage to enable supply throughout the year.
At the Delta Packhouse in Dargaville, they had to devise a plan to save the business and its jobs.
"[We have] a very committed workforce. Many of them have been with us for a long time and they shared in the growers' grief. We went about how we could handle it at the packhouse and brought everyone along with us," said Delta chief executive Locky Wilson.
"We reduced their working hours to 20 hours a week and three packing days a week. We probably lost about half a dozen casual staff who chose to retire or move out of the district.
"My proudest moment is that we didn't lose any management or salaried staff and retained a good percentage of our general staff."
At its peak last year, kūmara retailed for up to $15/kg; now, Wilson says kūmara can be bought for as low as $5/kg.
Disappointed by last year's crop, he was happy that Kiwis would have affordable kūmara this year. "We want them back. We did our best, but feel our customers were let down," said Wilson.
"People don't just like kūmara; they love kūmara," he said.
"We're into a great season. The quality is exceptional. We don't know the yields yet, but things are looking good.
"We're back."
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