Growers are pulling dead plants and rotting kūmara out of the ground. They say it’s just the start of Cyclone Gabrielle’s devastation.
At Pak’nSave, the orange ones will set you back $8.99 a kilo and the purple ones are $10.99. Customers at New World are being charged $10.99 for a 900-gram bag. At Countdown, they’re $10.99 a kilo too. Handily, its online store estimates each one will cost you $4.40. Get a big one and the sky’s the limit. “I paid $6.50 for one at Pak’nSave yesterday because they were all gigantic,” one Spinoff staff member admitted.
Right now, buying a humble handful of kūmara to add to your autumnal roasts, soups or mash is incredibly expensive. In a matter of weeks, prices at my nearest supermarket have risen from $1.99 to $10.99 a kilo. It doesn’t matter which variety you’re buying – even though the shiny pink sticker proudly declares “In season,” you’ll need a bonus or a bank loan to be able to afford them.
Why has the price of this staple food item skyrocketed so much? “It all depends on the weather,” says Warwick Simpson. The director of Simpson Farms, which covers about 50 hectares in Ruawai, near Dargaville, says growing good kūmara is a simple equation. “In a good year, it’s pretty easy … not too dry, not too wet. That’s about it.” He followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the family business 12 years ago. He enjoys being out in the sun all day, and the soil around him is perfect. “The clay base makes the tubers swell up nice.”
This year, Simpson’s equation has been blown to smithereens. First came the heavy December rainfall that ruined the kūmara planting season. Simpson estimates only 70% of his normal kūmara crops were able to be planted. Then came the cyclone. His crops were flooded and some were underwater for more than five days. There was so much rain hitting his farm Simpson couldn’t even measure how much there was. “The rain got blown across the rain gauge,” he says.
This has had a major effect on supply. Normally, growers begin pulling up crops in mid-February. Kūmara fans should be enjoying the bounty – and cheaper prices – of a plentiful new season, while surplus is stored for later in the year. Not this time. Instead, most plants have endured so much rain, they’ve simply died. What’s left is rotting in the ground. “No one knows for sure how much kūmara we’ve lost, but we know it’s a lot,” says Simpson. “There’s been estimates ranging from 50% of the crops lost through to 95%.”
The day Simpson chats to The Spinoff, he’s preparing to harvest his own crops. He’s not hopeful his will have fared any different to any of the other kūmara farmers he’s been commiserating with. “I haven’t talked to any kūmara growers that are completely unscathed,” he says. Some are wondering how they’ll survive. “There are going to be some pretty stressed out phone calls with the banks … because we’re going to have to borrow to get started again.”
Still, Simpson’s lucky: there’ll be some salvageable kūmara in among his rotting ones. Others haven’t been so fortunate. “There’s not going to be any kūmara from us this year,” Whangārei farmer Geoff Crawford told RNZ. Delta Produce general manager Lochy Wilson told Stuff he knows of one grower who paid staff to pull kūmara out of the ground by hand because tractors couldn’t get through the mud. “It blew every one out of the water,” Wilson says of the weather.
Just yesterday, food prices were confirmed to have risen 12% on this time last year, the biggest rise in 34 years. “Torrential rain and high winds have not just destroyed crops but have hampered the whole planting and harvesting cycle,” said United Fresh president Jerry Prendergast. As for those prices? Barring a miracle, they’re here to stay. “I think those high prices are probably going to stick around for about a 12-month period,” says Simpson. Basically, until the next season begins.
The great kūmara shortage of 2023 is something Charlotte Muru-Lanning has been thinking about a lot. “I don’t think there’s much that can replace the specific unadorned beauty of a boiled kūmara,” says The Spinoff’s resident kai expert and editor of newsletter The Boil Up. “Considering their staple significance within the indigenous food traditions of Aotearoa, it’s especially heartbreaking to see kūmara so inaccessible.”
She has some ideas to tide those missing them over the coming lean months. “If you’re looking to imbue a dish – say, a soup, roast vegetables or a warming pot of beans – with the same nutty sweetness, I’d simply dial up the carrot or parsnips,” she says. “Unfortunately both lack the melt-in-your-mouth richness of their expensive cousins, so I’d be extra generous with fatty ingredients like sour cream, cheese, seeds, avocado or bacon to make up for that.”
If that’s not for you, you could always turn to kūmara’s cheaper cousin, the potato. At $4.99 a kilo they’re half the price of kūmara, and Muru-Lanning predicts potatoes could soon be back on the menu in a big way. “As an alternative to the purple-fleshed variety of kūmara, I’d look out for bags of medley potatoes that include rīwai or purple potatoes – which are a worthy equivalent in both hue and their earthy mild-sweetness.”