Barry Lupton interviews Con Trass
The Traas family have been growing fruit for over 200 years. When Willem and Ali Traas found themselves running out of space in their native Netherlands, they upped sticks and moved to Ireland. After much searching, they finally settled in Tipperary in the late 60s, buying a farm with an established apple orchard. Since then, the family has expanded their business, opening a farm shop in the 1970s to provide a route to market for their increasing range, and a farm campsite in the 1980s. They now produce over 60 apples varieties, four strawberries, three raspberries, three plums, two pears and four cherries, all of which are sold through their farm shop or used in the production of their own brand
cider, vinegar, jams, and jellies. The business is now run by Willem and Ali’s son, Con.
“When my parents were out harvesting they used to carry me in a bucket with apples,” explained Con. “I guess you could say I was involved with fruit production before I could even walk.” Willem and Ali made a point of installing their passion and knowledge for fruit production in Con and he went on to cultivate it through his involvement in the business and by completing a degree and masters focused on pomology and apple pathology.
The Traas family business, The Apple Farm, represents an excellent example of how knowledge, experience, innovation, and diversification can be put into action to create a sustainable fruit production business. I was delighted to get the opportunity to talk with Con about the business, the challenges he faces and his plans for future.
Can you outline your typical work day?
The only typical thing about a working day on the farm is that it lasts about 12 hours, and is often seven days a week. The most normal days are those I spend lecturing at the University of Limerick, where I have a good idea of what is ahead of me from day to day and week to week. On the farm, I could be harvesting fruit, or in oily overalls fixing a machine, or dressed in a suit to meet a client, sometimes within a scarily short time frame.
As the business has expanded, how has your focus changed?
We added parts to the business (or farm as I prefer to call it – I regard myself as a farmer rather than a businessman) as we got comfortable with what we were already doing. It is one of the afflictions of a wandering mind and can cause headaches trying to manage lots of small units. We added juice production in 1995, and use about a third of our production to make juice, cider or cider vinegar. The lecturing side of my life is on average two and
a half days per week for about 10 months of the year.
Your business model would appear to fly in the face of contemporary intensive approaches to production. Rather than specialise, rationalise and consolidate, you have diversified all
aspects of your business. Can you provide some insight into why this approach was taken and why it’s worked for you?
I am conscious of that every day. We are not the most efficient at any of our products, with the possible exception of apples. It is all facilitated by the fact that we sell most of our products direct to consumers in our farm shop at prices exceeding those that most other growers would receive. We strive to sell better tasting fruit (and juices too) so that we get rapid repeat business at prices which are reasonable to consumers, yet better than would be received from most retailers or wholesale markets.
Part of the way that works is by not having too much of anything, competing with myself if you like. The excitement for consumers of getting really good cherries for just a few weeks of the year, or Opal plums in a similar short window, works for us. With apples, though the season is long, we also offer some less usual varieties.
What are the most significant day to day challenges your business model presents?
Not making a mess of what I am doing by being over-stretched in managing so many crops in relatively small scale, especially since the scale is not large enough to have individual managers in charge.
Following from the last question, what are the primary threats to your business?
One is the cost of housing in Ireland. Unfortunately, due to political weakness in Ireland, the price of houses (especially to buy) is again being allowed to escalate beyond the reach of people earning normal wages. This results in wage pressure (public and private sectors) which ultimately ends in higher taxes on smaller businesses (because due to another political failure large businesses don’t pay much tax), making the products we sell more and more expensive until eventually, we (as in anyone producing goods of relatively low value such as fruit and veg) will no longer be able to compete against imports. Unless Ireland decides to approach improving the economy by reducing house prices so that people don’t need ever increasing wages, the future for our type of horticulture is under severe threat.
Another point, and no less important than the first, is again a political failure: this time the failure to seriously tackle climate change. While this should have happened 30 years ago, when the “national ship” could have been turned slightly to be heading in the right direction, it was waffled about and debated long after the facts were settled, so much so that we are now going to have to make drastic changes. Unfortunately, we as growers see and bear the brunt of climate change, and extremes of any sort, whether rain, heat, cold or drought, are painful to contend with.
Have you been able to avail of government support to develop your business, and if so, what form did it take?
Yes. Leader grants to get into juice making, and also Bord Bia grants for marketing, and Department of Agriculture grants for investment in equipment, cold storage etc.
While the process of writing plans, completing applications and so on can be a bit daunting, the rewards make it well worthwhile.
The average horticulturalist would run screaming at the thoughts of dealing with the bureaucracy surrounding food production and accommodation. What has your experience been?
That would not be my experience. For instance, when we supplied Marks & Spencer with apples quite a few years ago, the Global gap and Field to Fork (the latter of which Keelings steered us through) were more demanding than what I do in juice production, though bear in mind that juice is considered low risk compared with some other forms of food production, so has less stringent regulations. The juice production is the same each day, and a system to ensure and record safety is actually easier in such an environment than in an open field growing apples.
If you could wave a wand and change any aspect of your business, what would it be?
I would eliminate apple canker and drive spotted wing drosophila from Ireland.
Most horticulturalists do what they do for the love of growing. Between lecturing, running the campsite, farm shop and food production facility do you still find time to do what you enjoy most?
Yes. And if I don’t I only have myself to blame for not organising somebody else to look after the elements that keep me from what I enjoy most, which is participating in the harvest of a really perfect crop of apples.
You have a great interest in research. How does your interest translate into the business?
Research in horticultural topics is very relevant to what I do on the farm. I spent many years in the lab assessing the susceptibility of apple scab to various chemicals. It gave me a great understanding of the organism and how to control it. Similarly, in terms of managing the orchard as an ecosystem rather than as a crop, both research and access to the research of others are very beneficial.
Following from the last questions can you describe your ecosystem approach to managing the orchard?
The idea is that you treat the orchard and the area around the orchard as a complex of organisms, rather than just the trees themselves. And you try to manage that to give the outcome you desire. So, for example, if the decision support system indicates that you need to spray a fungicide, you need to weigh up the options not just in terms of control of the disease and resistance management, but also its potential effect on beneficial organisms in the orchard (earwigs, typhlodromus, pollinating insects etc. above ground, earthworms and a host of other organisms underground). Which, depending on when during the season the application is made may result in a different choice. And the same applies to every decision you make – to mow or not to mow in a particular week, to place commercial bumblebee hives or not, and so on. And to bear in mind the impact of your choices during subsequent years. It means that you try to manage things in the orchard to minimise the harmful choices you have to make because nature can do a lot of the work for you as long as you don’t make an intervention which results in the requirement to make further interventions.
Are you currently undertaking on-site research or planning for the future?
The more recent projects I have been involved with relate to the use of metamitron as a chemical thinner of apples, and the accumulation (or not) of carbon in orchard soils. This is particularly relevant to the apple sector as with the exception of forestry, it may be one of the few agricultural land uses in Ireland that results in carbon sequestration. The positive implications for the environment if people drank cider and calvados instead of beer and whiskey would be interesting to calculate.
What are your views on the use of chemicals in fruit production and how do your views translate into business practices?
This is so hard to articulate. I believe that in the past 10 years quite a few chemicals have been removed from the EU market that should not have happened. These were lost, not because they were more environmentally damaging than newer alternatives, but because they were not defended by chemicals manufacturers as they had gone off-patent, and the interests of the manufacturers are actually to see these removed from the market so that they can sell patented products at much better profits instead. So the system favours new products over old, regardless of safety. While undoubtedly some of the old products have poor safety profiles, I hate to see anything taken out of the toolkit. I would have preferred a system where they were left there, and in a situation where there is no alternative, or where a newer alternative might have a greater adverse effect on a beneficial organism, despite a greater danger to, for instance, the person doing the application, that permission could be sought to use them. This would have empowered growers to make good decisions rather than taking away options. None of this complexity is covered by the regulations unfortunately.
Having said that, I also believe that we as growers tend to overly rely on chemicals, due to, for example, lack of knowledge combined with poor management, panic, cost of non-chemical alternatives and so on. How this translates into practice on my farm is very specific to each crop and each situation. Some crops are never sprayed, with total reliance on the introduction of predators and hand removal of fruits beginning to decay (cherries and plums fit the bill here), to use of significant quantities of fungicide on apples.
It’s been said that the lack of serious fruit production research in Ireland has put us 30 years behind our competitors. What is your opinion on the state of research in your area, and what do you think we should be doing?
With the exception of generic research that can be applied to more than one crop, unfortunately, the cost of research is too high to be economically justified for small-scale crops based on their current value. Either we have a plan to increase their value and use that to justify extra research, or we contribute to and learn from research coming from other countries. Otherwise, we continue to be behind our competitors.
The horticulture sector has always been undermined by its fragmentation and under-representation at a government level. How is the fruit production sector represented and how would you like to see this develop?
As chairman of the Irish Apple Growers Association, I am very much to blame for that under-representation. The apple sector is lucky in three ways. One is that the larger fruit sector is doing well in Ireland, and we can benefit under the umbrella of fruit. The second is that over €100 million worth of non-Irish apples are sold in Ireland each year, and the third, that Irish consumers are actually aware of the lack of Irish apples in the shops and are asking for them, creates a pressure for retailers to stock more Irish. I do believe that if we work together, as has been happening with the horticultural forum with the work of the committee and Stiofán Nutty, that progress can be made.
How has technology impacted your business and how do you see it shaping your business in the future?
In production, technology provides us with access to good scientific information and decision support systems. On the marketing side, we find Facebook to be very effective. In terms of the future, my feelings are mixed on this. The positives are obvious. On the other hand, quite a few people can now choose to live a lot of their time in a virtual world, with minimal interaction in the real one. Horticulture happens mostly in the real world, and I would be fearful of the implications of people becoming separated from the real world. It separates people from each other and from true interaction, not just with other people, but also with nature.
What are your plans for the business over the next decade?
Try not to get distracted into too many other avenues. Improve sustainability. And not become a businessman.
It’s been said that Irish horticultural sector is limited because horticulturalists are just that, horticulturalists. And if we all took a more businesslike approach we’d have a stronger sector. Following from the last question, what are your thoughts on this?
Despite what I said about not wishing to become a businessman, I can see the logic of that point. There are some people in horticulture who don’t think of anything beyond the field gate. I know one or two of them, and they are great producers, but they still don’t even have an email address. Despite being great growers, I would worry for them. On the other side, I have seen quite a few businessmen (and good ones at that) come into apple growing in Ireland and fail over the past three decades. And that was down to lack of horticultural skills, and too much haste in making long-term decisions, because of a 20-year timeline, which is what it will take to go through a business cycle from planting trees to removing them, is much longer than most business people are comfortable with.
What advice would you give to young horticulturalists considering a career in fruit production?
If you have done a general horticultural training, you will probably need more education in fruit production. While you can do this formally, you will also need practical training. Go abroad to one of the world’s best fruit producing regions and work in the industry for a few seasons, and try to learn from the good and bad practice you see there. The contacts you make will also be invaluable. Know who will consume your product – if you can’t sell directly to them, try to find a way you can.
Finally, don’t do it for the money. ✽
