As the European Union sets ambitious targets for organic production, two New Zealand hop farms are hoping to hop on for the ride.
The EU wants 25 percent of food production to be organic by 2030, up from around 10 percent, as part of its climate strategy. Europe is already the major market for organic hops and both Hinetai Farms and New Hoplands — the only two organic producers in the NZ Hops Ltd collective — are poised to make the most of this push.
Charles Oldham, of New Hoplands, has been growing organic hops for more than 30 years and around 25 percent of the crop is organic.
Earlier this year they supplied the organic hops for a Sawmill-Emerson’s collab that was a tribute to the original Emerson’s Organic Pilsner of the mid-1990s.
That one-off aside, organic beers are not exactly a “thing” in New Zealand. The original Mike’s Mild from Taranaki was organic while Founders in Nelson, before it was sold to Asahi, produced organic beer.
Oldham decided to plant organic hops when his father David came back from a trip to America.
“He met American brewers who were saying ‘man, you should grow organic hops in New Zealand – you don’t have the diseases and don’t do much spraying anyway’. He couldn’t believe the pests and funguses growers contend with over there. He realised, that if there’s one place in the world to grow hops organically, it’s here.
“I had a little farm next door and no-one was doing it so I thought I’d give it a go. I thought there would be a demand but for six years we were selling the organic hops conventionally. It slowly caught on and it was going well for a while.”
Hinetai Farms planted their first organic hops in 2009 off the back of Oldham’s success.
But no sooner were the hops harvested that New Zealand producers hit a snag in 2010 when the rules changed in America around the definition of “organic” says Dean Palmer of Hinetai Farms.
Until then American brewers could make organic beer without organic hops. “They had a rule about low percentage ingredients so if you had less than 1 percent of an ingredient and you could demonstrate it was hard to get hold of you could make a certified organic product with conventional inputs.”
When all ingredients had to be organic, Palmer said the reaction was “hallelujah” but what happened was lots of small organic farms decided to add hops to meet the new demand.
“We thought it was great, but it wasn’t great because everyone else saw the opportunity.”
Palmer sees the changing market in Europe as a potential boon. Most of his organic production — all Nelson Sauvin — goes to Europe. Right now there’s a recurrence of what happened in America 14 years ago, with organic farmers putting in hops to meet a growing demand.
“Once again we will have to weather the storm,” Palmer says, “but where New Zealand has an advantage is that we know about hops and we have the scale to thread the organic piece into it whereas others are starting from scratch — you can’t grow and harvest hops at scale when you don’t have the capability around hops.
“We’re the most economic producers of organic hops in the world and if anyone should be continuing it’s us and that’s while we’re still in it. I hope we’re right.”
Oldham still has a large market in Canada, through Mill Street Brewing, which built their award-winning organic line-up on New Zealand hops supplied by New Hoplands. Oldham grows Wakatu, Pacific Gem, Wai-iti, Motueka, Nectaron and Superdelic.
Both farms sell their organic hops through NZ Hops Ltd.
And both say the hardest thing about growing organic hops is weed control.
“Yes, they are harder to grow but the yields can be quite good,” says Palmer, “We think we’ve got quite good at organics. We’re in it because organics is a natural step up for us.
“We don’t canopy spray any conventional hops, in the US they have to spray organic pesticides and organic fungicides to grow their crops so there’s additional cost there and we have a natural leg up at this stage.
“We have a lot of compost made from the byproduct of hop waste. We are really good at composting and we use lots of it.
“In spring, for 5 percent of your area you’re putting in 50 percent of your management overhead. Every day you’re looking at the organics and if there’s something that has to be done you have to do it today or the next day — you can’t afford to wait a week otherwise the opportunity will be missed. With conventional hops you can afford to wait.”
“We have quite different [weed control] methods to Colin.”
New Hoplands control their weeds with an innovative tractor-mounted steam-sprayer that kills off weeds with heat.
Weeds aside, the upsides of organics outweigh the difficulties of the ever-changing market and both men are positive for growth in coming years. But there are other upsides as well that aren’t recorded on balance sheets.
Palmer says growing organics has helped with conventional hops. “The most valuable thing about organic farming is techniques we’ve learned from it that we’ve been able apply elsewhere on the farm because they’ve worked so well.”
Oldham says there’s a distinct difference between an organic block of hops and a conventional one.
“It’s hard to explain but the bees are buzzing, there’s weeds, there’s insects running around — the natural predators for the two-spotted mite — it just feels different, there’s just more life in it.”