New Zealand Fruitgrowers Charitable Trust provides both industry wide and direct support to different individuals each year. Direct support is always provided in a way that benefits the industry as a whole over the long term.
Young Growers
Young fruit growers can include students, graduates, post graduates and young people who have trained in, worked in or have experience or interest in fruit growing. We can help young people who are working while they study and we help women and groups who are traditionally less involved in fruit growing to discover this rewarding career choice.
Our support for young growers includes:
- scholarships and other education grants,
- annual young grower competitions
Careers in Fruit Growing
Watch these videos for advice on how to find out if a career in fruit growing is for you.
Commercial Growers
We work with consulting organisations and other groups to provide support to growers on industry issues. In the normal course of business we do not provide funds directly to individual growers.
Examples of our support include:
- in certain circumstances such as natural disasters, we have worked with consultants who have provided direct advice and support to individual growers,
- after biosecurity breaches, such as the PSA kiwifruit incursion, we support consultants and others to assist in finding solutions to the problem.
Industry Wide
We assist by funding groups and organisations to provide general research and initiatives that provide support to benefit the whole industry. We often help with problems related to various pests, fungi, diseases and other threats and how to prevent, eliminate or control them.
Examples of our support include assistance with:
- in alliance with other parties such as Horticulture NZ, government departments, local authorities and local fruit grower associations we help fund programmes to attract people into the fruit growing industry in an endeavour to meet necessary labour requirements,
- funding HortNZ and other industry participants to enable staff to visit countries where biosecurity breaches have occurred and evaluate control measures “on the ground”, e.g. the brown marmorated stink bug event in Chile,
- grants to assist with various research programmes, for example identifying plant varieties that are more resistant to certain diseases and developing more effective sprays to control them,
- higher education scholarships.
The Trust also makes a substantial contribution to the publishing of “The Orchardist” magazine which is distributed free to every levy paying fruit grower each month.
Learn More
Find out about grants offered by the trust, complete an application form or contact us to discuss how we can help you.