6 Sep 2021

Going bananas about growing bananas

From Nine To Noon, 11:30 am on 6 September 2021

There’s a growing interest in banana plantations in New Zealand, says Whangārei farmer Hugh Rose.

He believes the locally sourced produce could be in our stores in about five years.

He’s got a banana plant nursery, where he also grows paw paw and sugar cane, and is also spokesperson for Tropical Fruit Growers of New Zealand. 

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Photo: Supplied

The demand for bananas in the country is huge, he says.

"Every man, woman and child consume approximately 18kg per year. With Northland's population alone, the consumption is about 3,000,085 kilos a year.

"So New Zealand's consumption is huge, the amount of land we'd need to plant is massive.

"The beautiful thing about bananas is that they're one of the easiest crops to grow as long as you feed them plenty of mulch."

Even though we're mostly used to seeing the Cavendish variety from Ecuador in our stores, Hugh says New Zealand has many more varieties and flavours to offer.

"The earliest [banana plantation] came into the country about 1924, and so backyard bananas usually grown improperly can actually turn into nice fruit in really good flavours. And again, local soil, the uptake is different flavours for different regions.

"We've got everything from pineapple-flavoured to super sweet to quite bland and it's amazing how people's palettes vary tremendously.

"Also, the appearance of bananas, [we've got] everything from blue bananas, red bananas, striped bananas, green and white-striped bananas, all sorts of different shapes, colours, flavours and sizes."

He says the ones sourced from overseas may taste different because of the chemicals used to remove any diseases or pests and bugs.

"Whereas in New Zealand, we just don't have those problems."

It's not just the fruit that's useful, the leaves are used for ceremonials, wrapping food or even fibre, Hugh says.

"The flower bell itself is edible and used in vegan cooking and a lot of different ethnic cooking."

In and amongst his collection, Hugh has some from the earliest shipment to New Zealand and says he would be interested in older ones or a gros michel variety, which has become rare.

"There's thousands of different types of bananas, but unfortunately when you plant a monoculture, it's very easy for it to be wiped out.

"I have customers who buy plants off me in Invercargill, they wheel them out for the sunshine and hide them when it rains. People in the Wairarapa are growing bananas but always with their eyes to the frost and winds, you have to be dedicated to growing [them].

"Also a lot of bananas are subtropical, they can handle to a certain degree a certain amount of frosting."