Peter Reynolds, a vegetable grower from Pukekohe south of Auckland, has received the Horticulture Bledisloe Cup, the highest honour in New Zealand horticulture, which recognises outstanding service to the industry. It was presented at the 2026 New Zealand Horticulture Conference gala dinner, where, Reynolds recalls, the government and industry leaders at his table were unusually quiet because they were afraid of giving the surprise away.
His career has covered potatoes, onions and pumpkins, cattle and sheep, and kiwifruit, across 15 blocks around Pukekohe and Tuakau that made up the family business. He hosted many research trials, pushed for technical innovation and good practice, and helped unite grower groups in a way that led to the formation of Potatoes New Zealand and Onions New Zealand.
He has also argued that care for the land pays: shelter belts, riparian planting along waterways, soil erosion controls and rotation between cropping and grazing, he showed, can go together with commercial success. "We've been very aligned with research. Researchers would come here and know we would look after their trials," he said.
The Reynolds family arrived in the district from Ireland in 1865 and 1911 and started with small plots of dairy, potatoes and grain. His father Tom, an army armourer in the Second World War, came home to farming with horses and began adapting equipment for the first tractors, part of a local habit of building and sharing machinery that, Reynolds says, grew into Pukekohe's engineering firms making field and packhouse equipment. Tom also developed an early onion that the family still grows, ready just as stocks of the Pukekohe Long Keeper variety run out.
Now 72, Reynolds is easing into retirement on a 50-acre block where he is fencing off wetlands, planting native trees and raising cattle. Most of his brothers have retired too; two farms have been sold and others leased, with modern automated irrigation in place.
He named the cost of producing healthy food and rising compliance costs imposed by councils and government as the sector's challenges, called for support for young people starting out, and sees opportunity in new technology over the next ten years, "particularly drones, not just for spraying, but for a whole range of other work too."
Photo: Auckland Photo News / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Source: Global Agriculture
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