At the far end of the extensive paddock near Matamata, five people are harvesting potatoes, and not one has a spade.

Growing potatoes on the scale of this A S Wilcox & Sons Limited operation requires automation and technology far beyond spade work to make it viable and efficient.

The Grimme 170-60 harvester drawn by a 275 hp Fendt tractor harvests potatoes at around five kilometres an hour.

The huge Grimme 170-60 harvester drawn by a 275 hp Fendt tractor travels at about five km/h. It gently extracts the vegetables from the earth, removing any attached vegetation, undersize potatoes and much of the dirt, before delivering them to the enclosed platform where four women carry out an initial quality check.
It's the role of Aaron Mudgway to drive the tractor and control the harvester which has the capacity to hold six tonnes of potatoes. Once full, another tractor towing a trailer pulls alongside and Aaron raises a delivery shoot to deposit the potatoes into six bins.
”This trailer was designed and manufactured by Wilcox engineers to reduce damage to the potatoes,” says Mike Taylor, Wilcox Matamata manager. The trailer is fitted with an upper structure which looks a little like over-sized fruit picking bags, with canvas shoots and straps to slow the potatoes' descent into the bins. Innovation and quality in potato growing is vital in a market competing with other foods and in which customer quality demands are high.
'Around a third of our Matamata production is for the domestic market and two-thirds for processing and we grow different varieties to suit the seasons and customer demands,” says Mike – who has been with Wilcox since he left school in 1966.
Back then to most consumers a potato was a potato – to be boiled, mashed, fried or roasted and eaten virtually every day.

Varieties
Now there are specific varieties packed and labelled for different cooking qualities, and Wilcox has become a leader in growing gourmet potatoes for salads. Then there are the varieties needed by processers who turn them into potato chips, frozen chips and French fries.
Although pasta, rice and other vegetables have affected potato consumption, they are still the number one vegetable, with 87 per cent of us eating them at least three times a week and 35 per cent of New Zealanders eating them daily.
Growing potatoes has come a long way since the company's beginnings.
The late Syd Wilcox founded the company in 1954 after growing potatoes on his Pukekohe dairy farm during the depression of the 1930s to supplement his income. In 1943 he took the bold step to convert his whole property to potato and onion cropping.
In 1984 the operation expended to Matamata with the purchase of 300 acres of land for growing crops. 'Now we grow on around 800 ha of both company and leased land at Matamata,” says Mike.
Wilcox grows potatoes and onions in Pukekohe, Matamata and Ohakune to ensure year-round supply. 'Matamata fits in between the early potatoes in Pukekohe and later varieties in Ohakune although there is some overlap.”

Soils
The move to Matamata was also partly to preserve the more fragile Pukekohe soils which can be hard to work in winter. It's Mike's personal belief that Matamata soils and environment provide one of the best growing regions in the country, despite the fact it is dominated by dairying and horse breeding.
'The land is generally flat, the soils of high quality and the weather ideal for cropping.”
Preserving soils has high priority for the company and the use of GPS navigation systems is one way of achieving this.
'Ever since I started working for the company I've tried to drive in perfectly straight lines but it's not easy using just your eyes and judgement. Now our drivers can do it without thinking as the machines are guided automatically.
'This ensures that each tractor or sprayer which passes over the field follows exactly the same wheel tracks, reducing compaction. Once each crop is harvested, wheel track ripping equipment is used to aerate the soils again.
Controlling soil erosion is another key consideration as up to 90 square meters of soil can be washed away from a heavily contoured 14 ha vegetable field in heavy rain. Wilcox uses contour drainage, silt traps, cover crops and tilling techniques which create minimal disturbance to the soil structure to conserve soils and reduce erosion.
The rotation at Matamata includes potatoes, maize, grass and onions. 'The aim is not to mine the soils but preserve them.”

Psyllid
Growing potatoes has always been challenging, but never more so than in Ireland during 1845 to 1852 when blight caused crops to fail and one million people died of starvation and a million more left their homeland.
'Blights are still a problem and so are a whole lot of other pests and diseases which we have to keep on top of,” says Mike.
The latest pest is the small insect known as the potato/tomato psyllid, a native of North America which arrived in New Zealand around 2006. Nymphs, and possibly adults, inject a toxin into the plants when they feed which causes discolouration of leaves and the plant to become stunted exhibiting ‘psyllid yellow' and ‘purple top'. Importantly there is no food safety risk with this complex condition, but there can be considerable crop loss. In potatoes, the psyllid can cause a reduction in the numbers and size of tubers and production of secondary tubers. The insect can also carry the bacterial pathogen Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum which can cause a condition known as 'zebra chips”. This produces black lines in potatoes infected with the bacteria when they are fried.
Mike says Wilcox has learned to control the insect with a combination of measures and by planting host plants for predator insects such ladybirds and spiders, around the edges of paddocks.
The weather is another factor to contend with and while irrigation helps in a dry summer, like all primary industries, croppers are at the mercy of the elements.
It's these challenges, the satisfaction of producing food for thousands of people and the ethos of the company itself which is why Mike has made cropping his career.
'The company structure has changed but Wilcox is still a family company with family values and a third generation, some of them just youngsters when I started, now involved,” says Mike.
It helps that he also likes potatoes – especially the Wilcox variety called Vivaldi, mashed or roasted.