Efficiency the key for Jason Shields of Plunkett’s Orchard at Ardmona
Jason Shields of Plunkett Orchards at Ardmona is winning acclaim for his efficiencies-driven approach to farming, which saw him take out the AUSVEG Grower of the Year title.
JASON Shields has come a long way since the late 1990s when he readily admits to being a “19-year-old unemployed bum” looking for work in northern Victoria’s agriculture-rich Goulburn Valley.
“I grew up at Mooroopna and like most young blokes was having a crack at playing footy when I said to a coach ‘If you get me a job I’ll play for you’,” the now 42-year-old said “I ended up going and doing an apprenticeship on his orchard and got my foot into the industry that way.”
That foot in the door extended to a leg when, in January 2000, having completed his apprenticeship — and following a short stint working for a large corporate-owned orchard in the region — he lobbed on the doorstep of the Plunkett family’s fourth-generation Plunkett Orchards at Ardmona, on the larger scale of apple and pear production growing fruit for major supermarkets and wholesale outlets as well as key export markets.
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“I heard they were looking for an orchard manager … I was only 22 or 23 at the time, but I thought I’d give it a shot,” Jason recalled.
“At the time Andrew (managing director and fourth-generation apple grower Andrew Plunkett), who is only a few years older than me, had just come back from university and expanded the shed and the orchard. And he needed someone to look after the orchard.”
And the rest, they say, is history. Forget about a foot or leg in the door, Jason is now up to his eyeballs in the industry. After almost 20 years, he has helped steer the Plunkett business towards the point where it now produces 9000 tonnes of fruit from 150ha and is growing at an impressive rate of about 10 per cent a year.
For Jason, it is all about maximising efficiencies. In recent years he’s helped preside over the introduction of state-of-the-art platforms that have revolutionised orchard jobs such as thinning, pruning and harvest, and now a major investment in new “game-changing” processing and packing facilities to be up and running by next season.
If that’s not enough, last month he became the first apple grower to take out the prestigious AUSVEG horticulture Grower of the Year title.
TREE CHANGE
JASON oversees Plunkett’s 250ha, spread over four farms around Ardmona. There is about 150ha of orchards and about 300,000 trees.
Pink Lady is the main variety, followed by Granny Smith then Gala. There’s also newer varieties of snack apples Rockit, MiApple and Kanzi, as well as Packham pears.
Jason said the orchards produced about 60 tonnes of fruit a hectare — or about 9000 tonnes in total — taking into account bearing and non-bearing trees. Yields vary according to variety, with bearing pink lady trees averaging about 70 tonnes/ha. Younger trees produce less.
Plunkett doesn’t harvest its trees for the first two years. By year five the trees are at 80 per cent of production, rising to 90 per cent the following year before hitting full production in year seven. New trees are generally grafted on to M9 rootstock and grown in a nursery for two years before being planted in the orchard spaced 1.5m apart, with 3m between rows.
Plunkett operates on a multileader tree system to promote more uniform fruit quality and make it easier for mechanisation.
The business works on a rule of 2200 trees per hectare and Jason said while other growers might plant “4000, 5000, 6000 trees” in the same area a “significant outlay” of $12-$15 a tree needed to be factored in.
“So potentially they may be 5 per cent in front of us in five years’ time, but we have $40,000/ha less payback,” he said.
Soils are mostly sandy loam and Jason said the good thing about the Goulburn Valley was that it had “an abundance of it”. “That is why we can spread our trees out a bit further,” he said. “A lot of the other good growing areas are limited to a very small patch of ground that is suitable for growing, or boast land values that are so high they have to maximise their 30ha because they can’t just go and buy another 30ha.”
Jason said Plunkett had looked at expanding into other regions but found the cost prohibitive once infrastructure and water costs were taken into account.
JUST ADD WATER
PLUNKETT Orchards is dependent on irrigation with the region working on an annual average rainfall of just 450mm. This year so far has been drier than normal with just 140mm falling — about 100mm less than what it would normally expect by now.
Water is sourced from the Goulburn Murray Irrigation District and, depending on the season, 1ha of trees requires about six to seven megalitres to produce a crop.
Soil-moisture probes linked to computer systems are dotted across the farms with water and nutrients delivered by microjet sprinklers. With 40C-plus temperatures not uncommon in summer, overhead misting has been installed in the orchards to cool fruit. Hail netting protects crops from storms and helps minimise sunburn and heat damage.
Jason said the reality of the business was that “a lot of our world is now run from software”.
“I remember 20 years ago, I used to drive around all day turning (water) valves on and off but now we can see on a computer what is happening and can perform these tasks automatically,” he said.
“It means we have so much more time to invest in the business rather than running around.
“I can visually watch the orchard without being out in the paddock. A few years ago I was in Hawaii and frost alarms were going off, and I was turning on and off irrigation from my phone.”
Plunkett is particularly conscious of the environment with organic matter applied each year to help improve soil structure and fertility. Its green credentials also extend to pest and disease management, which has been transformed in the past three years.
Previously the business relied solely on a chemical-based management program which Jason said was failing repeatedly “to the point where we were spending more money, spraying more and having worse results”.
“At that point we realised we had to do something different and we employed integrated pest management,” he said.
“Since then not only have we cut almost 80 per cent of our chemistry out but we’ve learned the impact of what the chemistry was doing to beneficial insects.
“We can’t believe that we turned around in 12 months — I have reduced my insecticide spray costs by 70 per cent with no damage and I’m at the point where I don’t know if I need to spend that 30 per cent. I’m also now 100 per cent confident that I can grow organics.”
‘TIS THE SEASON
ACTIVITY ramps up at Plunkett at the beginning of September with bud break. Thinning and pruning takes place during November and December with harvest running from the middle of January until the end of May. Jason said labour was the biggest cost for the business, “by miles”, accounting for about 60-70 per cent of outgoings. Staff numbers peak during harvest with 80 workers in the orchard and 100 in the packing shed.
Locals make up the core year-round staff with most employees working holiday visa holders. Jason said with experienced workers “harder and harder to find” the business had factored in a need to modify farming systems so “anyone can do it”.
In contrast to other orchards, workers are paid set wages and not according to how much fruit they pick. Plunkett’s introduction four years ago of elevated semi-automated work platforms means there is no physical strength needed to perform tasks, making work more appealing to a broader range of capabilities.
Jason describes the platforms as “the biggest game changers ever”. “It is kind of like working in a shed but it is in an orchard … it is like a factory going down the rows,” Jason said.
“We have had them for four years but this year was the first we did everything (harvesting, as well as thinning and pruning) with them.”
At thinning and pruning, the platforms mostly replace the need for staff on ladders and cherry pickers. Workers stand on the platforms at various height levels and the machine self steers down the rows, allowing workers to have both hands free. Plunkett has also started using flower-thinning machines — similar to whipper-snippers — to cut excess flowers from trees.
Jason said while some manual thinning was still required, the number of flowers being reduced earlier led to better fruit size and quality.
At harvest six pickers positioned on the platform place apples individually on conveyor belts that deliver fruit to central bin. Each machine allows for the picking of about 250 bins a day.
“Now, no two fruit touch which means quality and productivity have gone through the roof,” Jason said.
“We still need the workers but we are making them more efficient. They are not having to carry a bag and walk to a bin and unload it.
“Before we needed a person walking up and down rows over a big block just putting tickets on bins. Now people on the machines are putting the bin tickets on.
“We also don’t have tractors screaming up and down rows trying to keep up with people that are spread everywhere.”
REAPING THE REWARDS
PLUNKETT now has seven of the elevated platforms and while they each cost about $150,000 Jason said they provided plenty of bang for buck.
“We need to have a 7 per cent efficiency gain to pay the machine back within three years,” Jason said. “Just in harvest alone we think we’ve got a 15-20 per cent quality gain and that will pay back the machine in less than a year.”
When fruit enters the packing shed it is refrigerated and slowly brought down to 2-4C. “As long as it went in the right condition” fruit can potentially be stored for 10 months and will come out exactly the same.
After coming out of refrigeration, fruit is washed and brushed before entering an 18-lane machine that separates fruit according to weight.
An employee is currently required to man each packing lane and, with bins not averaged out equally “some workers might have 50 per cent to do while others might have 150 per cent to do”.
Under a new system, to be up and running by next harvest, washed fruit will run through a grader and internal defect sorter before being pre-sized into bins based on quality grades and fruit size.
The bins will then run through a rapid pack lane.
“It means every person has the exact same amount of apples to pack,” Jason said. “We are making it more efficient. It is not a case of saving labour — it is a case of not wasting labour. That is a massive technology breakthrough.”
Supermarket chains such as Woolworths, Coles and Aldi account for the biggest slice of Plunkett’s apple pie, followed by high-end fruit and vegetable shops and the wholesale fruit and vegetable market.
Most fruit goes to Sydney and Queensland with deliveries made by the business’s own fleet of trucks.
NORTHERN EXPOSURE
TARGETING the northern markets is a conscious decision for Plunkett, given it costs only a third more to get fruit to Sydney than it does Melbourne, where it must compete with fruit from closer growing regions such as the Yarra Valley.
Plunkett’s export market for apples has also been increasing each year, mostly to Asia. About 60-70 per cent of pears are exported, mostly to Canada and New Zealand, with a small portion shipped to Asia.
The business also produces its own cider, which Jason said was produced by about one truckload of juice for the year.
Looking ahead, Jason said the business would continue to grow at a rate of about 10-15ha a year.
“Apple prices have probably come down in the past three years but they are not anywhere near the levels where we would consider stopping planting,” he said.
“If you still grow a good product, the returns are good but the actual cost a bin of fruit through the whole process … by the time you store it, you dip it, you pack it — you’re needing to recoup $250-$300.
“If you’re only getting 30 per cent pack-out rates, it doesn’t matter what the supermarkets are paying, you’re not making money.
“The quality in that bin has to be so high to be able to spread those post-harvest costs over multiple boxes.
“The consumer wants a good experience so we can’t deliver a poor product and expect the consumer to keep buying it.”
That’s one core business plan.
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