HARCOURT apple growers expect to reap their best harvest in a decade this season.
However, the prediction comes with their most valuable crop, Pink Lady apples, still on the tree.
Frosts, drought and flocks of ravenous birds have pushed the region’s fruit growers to the brink in recent seasons, but the industry believes a bumper 2007-08 crop could wipe away years of debt.
On the eve of the town’s annual festival – the Harcourt Applefest – industry stalwart Trevor Peeler said growers were finally in the mood for a party.
“This is the best chance we’ve had in a decade,” Mr Peeler said.
“A lot of growers are carrying tens of thousands of dollars debt because of the last few seasons.
“We’re hoping this year can start to change that trend and get us on a solid footing going forward.”
Mid-season predictions have this year’s harvest at 85 per cent after a horror 2006-07 season in which apple growers harvested less than 30 per cent of their crop.
Hordes of musk lorikeets, forced from their natural bush habitat by drought, ravaged the Harcourt apple crop over the past three years.
Last season the bird damage followed a severe frost which killed off thousands of fruit buds at the start of the growing year.
And with no way of obtaining more than their 35 per cent water allocation, growers were left helpless.
“Having a cup of tea in the morning and you hear the first flock of musk lorikeets fly over, your blood pressure goes through the roof,” Mr Peeler said.
‘‘You are watching them eat your income and there’s nothing you can do.
‘‘We are really in the hands of nature.
‘‘We try to control what we can, tree nutrition, watering, pruning, and then hope that nature looks after us.
‘‘And, for the first time in almost 10 years, it has.
’’In 2008, the lorikeets have stayed away, and a unnaturally wet December boosted the crop.
Mr Peeler also says a new water trading scheme, which allows farmers to on-sell their unused water, has helped growers to capitalise on the favourable conditions.
The water trading scheme has seen decimated beef and sheep farms across the region sell their water allocation to fruit farmers.
Mr Peeler said some fruit growers who had pulled out large sections of their trees would now consider replanting their abandoned orchids at a cost of about $40,000 per hectare.
But fellow Harcourt grower Gary Grant said the industry was on a knife’s edge until the Pink Lady crop was harvested.
With one-third of the harvest completed, the Pink Ladies, which account for about 55 per cent of the region’s crop and fetch the highest price at market, are still on the tree.
‘‘We’ve got to keep the water up to them before we pick them and that can prove very expensive,’’ Mr Grant said.
A megalitre of water has cost Harcourt growers from $500 to $1000 this season.
Mr Grant said unless it rained many growers could be forced to fork out big money for water.
‘‘If you start outlaying enormous amounts of money for water you mightn’t get a return,’’ he said.
‘‘We are price takers, not price setters.
‘‘We grow something and we get told what our in-costs are, then we take our product to the market and say what will you give us for it?’‘
At the end of the day we’ve still got a long way to go before we get there.’’
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