A new interactive mapping tool giving farmers, growers, and landowners a practical way to assess crop diversification has been released in Central Hawke’s Bay.

The tool draws on scientific data from the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge, now held in a publicly accessible repository called the Data Supermarket, says Libby Tosswill, economic growth manager at Central Hawke’s Bay District Council. Tosswill says the data requires Geographic Information System (GIS) expertise to access in its raw form, so the council built the tool to make it practical and visual.

“A picture paints a thousand words… growers can look at the viability or the suitability of 16 crops on their land in Central Hawke’s Bay.”

Users can view crop suitability across the district or zoom down to their individual title, Tosswill says. The tool incorporates long-term climate, soil, economic, and market data, and reflects where crop growing conditions are shifting over time.

“We knew about apples, but that has obviously been confirmed. Berries, sauvignon blanc, and even avocados. That does change a paradigm,” Tosswill says.

The underlying data assumes access to irrigation and does not take rainfall into account, Tosswill says, and the council has made that assumption clear within the tool.

“That’s up to the individual landowners to do their due diligence on and look at further.”

​For growers considering land use changes, longer-term crops such as kiwifruit and berries require more significant research, development, and capital investment, she says.

“We’re just trying to help enable any positive land use optimisation as part of our overarching economic growth strategy.”

Tosswill says early feedback has been positive and the model could be replicated in other regions, as the underlying data is nationally available.

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