Aaron McCloy: On the warming climate lifting demand for tropical seedlings

The warming climate's shifting our growing conditions - and lifting demand for tropical seedlings.  

Plant nursery Far North Tropicals has seen demand increase four fold every year, since it formed three years ago.  

Bananas, pawpaw and pineapples are among those being sent across the country - including to typically colder regions like Invercargill 

Nursery founder Aaron McCloy told Mike Hosking there's a lot of potential both for casual gardeners and commercial growers.  

He says people are noticing they have less or no frost where they used to have frost - which is ideal for growing tropical plants.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good news around climate turns out as it gets warmer,
we may well be able to grow different types of fruits,
things like bananas might well boom in this country. Demands
increasing nationwide apparently for sun loving plants.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Aaron McCloy is from far North tropicals and it's with us.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Aaron morning, Yeah, good morning. How are you today?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Very well? Indeed, I was thinking about this yesterday I
was leaving the country up north. It was twenty degrees
at my place yesterday, twenty in August. It's ridiculous. Are
we getting there in terms of temperature? Has it change
or is it still changing?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Oh? That's a that's one hundred thousand dollars million dollar question,
isn't it. But I think what people are noticing is
that a lot of people getting less frost or no
frosts where they used to get frosts, and that makes
a massive difference. Do you want to grow tropical plants?

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Do we want to grow to do we want to
do it because we can and go look at that?
How cool is it I've got a banana? Or do
we do it because there's genuine demand and we can
save ourselves a few food miles.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, I think that's two questions. The first is, I
mean there's a banana fruiting on Oriental Prede in Wellington
last year. The other thing is there's people in the
backyards can go, okay, this is cool. I'm a gardener.
I can now grow pineapples pretty much over a great
whack of the country if you want to go for

(01:15):
red pineapples. And that's just the cool factor. The other
thing is, especially up in Northland, you can go, I
can put it in a hectare of bananas, you know,
and then make it an actual commercial venture. So and
it's successful.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So are you getting more per hector on bananas than
you would be, say, sheep, dairy, beef, whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Oh for sure. We did some banana workshops. We had
some beef farmers come along and they were telling us
get in about fifteen hundred per hectare for dry stock,
and at three or four bananas per per sorry, bananas
at three three meters apart, you can get them up
to about fifty five sixty k per hectare.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
That's and that's really liable or highly speculative.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
No, no, that's basically we work it off tin kg bunches.
Whereas the bunches are usually fifteen to twenty five kgs,
so we're kind of right down to the very minimums
of what you might be getting and we haven't even
factored them too. If you're going to start selling the flowers,
the leaves, the honey or the stems on top of

(02:23):
selling the bananas.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
So there's lots of potential there. Interesting inside. Eron, well done,
appreciate your time very much, Aeron mcloy who's a far north.
Tropicals are the times they are at changing, it's going
to I was reading a piece over the weekend some
of the orchid not orchards, vineyards in France, Germany, et cetera,
with the tough summers they're having there having to think
long and hard about where they go in the future.
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