Farmers given wrong swede seed
A ‘‘human error’’ in seed deliveries across much of the country has resulted in hundreds of farmers planting the wrong variety of swedes on their properties.
PGG Wrightson Seeds has alerted farmers who bought the new seed variety, Hawkestone yellow-fleshed Cleancrop swede, that a different line of whitefleshed swede, HT-S57, had been distributed to them instead.
HT-S57 swede was phased out in 2016 and replaced with the Hawkestone swede variety. However, the HT-S57 seed was distributed to farmers for planting for winter feed instead of the new Hawkestone swede variety. The company said that the mistake was caused by human error. Most of the 556 farms receiving the seed substitution are in Southland and Otago, with a few in Canterbury and the central North Island.
PGG Wrightson Seeds general manager New Zealand David Green said it was a serious mistake and with the challenges Southland and Otago farmers had been facing with the drought this season, he knew it was something farmers did not need. ‘‘We’ve made a mistake here,’’ he said.
The mix-up was detected on a farm visit, when an agronomist recognised the bulb part of the crop was white, not yellow as it should have been.
The company investigated immediately and has been making contact with each farmer through retailers, to alert them of the ‘‘substitution’’.
Green did not rule out compensation, but said the company was focussed on making sure affected farmers were aware of the situation before deciding if other actions would be taken.
There would be situations where farmers had crops earmarked for certain classes of stock, which they might not feel comfortable feeding the HT-S57 swede variety, Green said.
HT-S57 was on the market for seven years, and in that time about
45,000 hectares were planted nationally.
The herbicide tolerant variety was briefly in the limelight when unusual weather in Southland caused unexpected growth patterns in brassica crops, leading to deaths and illnesses of stock in
2014. That year 200 Southland dairy cows and 300 ewes died after eating herbicide tolerant (HT) swedes.
The swede variety continued to be sold after the issues, and had been phased out and replaced in a ‘‘normal’’ life cycle, Green said.