Maori women in business

Tu Tangata, Issue 23, 1 April 1985, Page 18

Maori women in business

Maori women in business are being heard of more often these days. Their desire to go into the commercial world on their own account and that they are Maori seems to make them stand out. Tu Tangata Magazine profiles one such businesswoman, Hine Potaka, who with her husband became part of the now booming kiwifruit industry in New Zealand.

“I am one of those senior citizens still working and particularly with the love of the soil because it was through lessons from my grandparents that I know how to cultivate that same soil. I come from the kiwifruit capital of the world, Te Puke, did you know that. It’s fact, it’s a fact that’s known all over the world. Let’s look then at the background reasons why we looked at the kiwifruit industry as something for us to do. In the year 1976 we realised that our dairy farm which was of 40 acres, milking forty cows was becoming uneconomical, that we needed a bigger herd, bigger ground, bigger acreage in order to make it a viable business. Also at the time the development of the horticultural industry in the Te Puke district was fast becoming a rapidly growing industry, especially nga kiwifruit nei and so we could foresee that land values would rise and also the rates na ka penei ahau with my husband, well, if we can’t beat them we’ve got to join them. That’s the saying you know, if you can’t beat them you’ve got to join them. However in the Maketu coastal area they joined us meaning we were the first people in the district to grow kiwifruit, how’s that for maoridom. Two years later when visiting an orchard in the mid-North the orchardist who was Maori, enquired if we knew of the Potaka’s from the Bay of Plenty. We replied why, he went on to say that the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries had said that the Potaka family were the first Maori in New Zealand to establish a kiwifruit enterprise, how’s that. What was our reaction, to work hard to achieve and maintain a standard comparable with the best orchards in the Te Puke district. Kia kaha matou kite mahi. The other background reason was and we pay a tribute to our father, to my husband. You know he has the perception and in looking ahead as to how death duties could possibly affect the land we decided to gift a portion of that land to our two sons and to establish and develop the orchard as a whanau opera-

tion and so a meeting of the clan took about. We only have the two sons, we have no daughters but we have two very fine daughters-in-law and we have eight mokopunas. Our sons by trade are a meat inspector, the other a fitter engineer. The one who lives close to home stepped down from his work as a meat inspector to go and learn the trade of kiwifruit. The other retained his work and today is so useful in purchasing our engineering equipment and also maintaining it. Let’s now take you on our road of discovery as it were and let’s look at the development and management of our kiwifruit orchard. 1976 we started the planting of the shelter belt these we found were suitable, these types of shelter belts, the Matsudana, Willows and the Japanese Cedar. 1977 the nurturing of the shelter belts plus maizecropping for two years between those shelter belts.

1978 planting of the Bruno seedlings into a ‘bug free’ nursery, the weeding and the staking a nga kanga ki matou. The family, our mokopuna the eldest at that time was seven and then we had two girls of five. They came into that nursery and helped us weed. “Give me your weeds put them in the basket we’ll take it to the side for you.” The mokopuna ran in and out of that nursery. 1979 saw us putting our Bruno plants transplanted from the nursery into the orchard, the nurturing and the weeding and the fertilisation continued, and what a job. 1980 was the grafting of the Hayward strain onto the Bruno stake and the weeding and the mowing continued, as well we put in the posts with one wire. 1981 we set up the Pagola System and the wires. 1982 we regrafted some of our plants due to 10% less from year 1980. We continued then to train the vines, to apply the fertilizer, to continue weeding and our first kiwifruit appeared, three fruit. We wondered whether to call them Faith, Hope, and Charity, what were the other three names we decided, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We collected these three fruit and brought

them up to the homestead and we said you have that one for your household e hoa ... and we’ll have the other and we blessed them and gave them their due place. 1983 was the continuation of the training and priming of the vines. Three beehive pallets costing $1,200 were placed in the orchard at intervals throughout the twelve kiwifruit blocks. Pollenation begins at a 20% bud burst of flower, about the middle of November. The spraying programme began and continued every three weeks from the bud formation till January in that year, when because of severe drought conditions coupled with strong winds we ceased to spray. We realised that we had to install irrigation. We therefore consulted with the irrigation experts and the costing was to be if we adopted their method $20,000. Ko penei taku whanau. “Father surely you’ve got the initiative and the theory to install something less costly, and so he did, dreamt up his own idea. Dalgety gave him a gold card costing us $3,500, how’s that for a husband. 1984 was the continuation of the 1983 programme, spraying from bud formation every three to four weeks till three days before picking. It was for us the year, 1984, a bumper year. It was for us our first major pick for overseas market and also local processing. The Bricks Test which is the test to identify the sugar content in the kiwifruit was completed before May the 3rd which gave us the green light to pick. Ten fruit from each 12 blocks were chosen and tested and because the sugar content reached that level of 6.2 and further, the day was ready to pick and so our family came together, two sons, the two wives, the three older mokopunas, 16 the oldest and two of twelve, went into that orchard, we didn’t need any other help and we picked and I’ll tell you how much we got, 36 tonnes of fruit which gave us 6,500 trays for export, which gave us in money terms $65,000. e hoa ma. Now then that is the gross, but ... of that $65,000 we have got two-thirds running costs and a third will come to us the grower, how’s that. One and a half tonnes out of 36 tonnes of fruit remained at home for wine-making, juicing and canning. Now when you think of that, the quality therefore of our fruit was very

very good. Due to the whanau nurturing, due to that continual communication with the authorities, with the people who would be able to help us. We have seventeen acres, a hundred and thirty five plants to the acre bringing us a total of 2,295 plants. We have 34 male plants to the acre bringing us 678 plants and in our orchard we have planted one male to four females. It’s interesting if you come to see me in that orchard and to see how the vines of those male plants reach out ... they reach out to the female plants, interesting interesting. Let’s look at cost to establish our orchard. Our plants which were seedlings, one inch high when we bought them ... so we had to buy little plants to put them in the nursery cost us S4OO at that time 1978. Our posts and wires cost us SIO,OOO our overheads cost us SB,OOO our shelter belts SSOO. It got to the stage very early in the decisionmaking bet-

ween the family where we had to consider a putea and so father and his two sons created their putea. Each contributing a portion of their wages, plus monies from maizecropping on the 30 acres. Loans When we decided we would go into this industry our two sons approached Maori Affairs for a loan or if there was any possibilities for a loan. No loan was granted, reasons, land not yet proven for horticulture and we are not a family to take this kind of thing lying down and so what we did was to prove our worth to Maori Affairs that we can do it. As time went on Maori Affairs rang asking us if we would take some trainees and if in fact they could bring across the Patea people whose meatworks had become redundant to look at our kiwifruit orchard.