Wellington hit 19°C in the first two days of June. Christchurch, Ashburton, Timaru, Whanganui, and Palmerston North were all tracking toward their driest May on record. An El Niño event is now assessed at 95% probability of developing over the June-August period. None of this is abstract. For the growers behind New Zealand’s record horticulture numbers, winter warmth is not a comfort. It is a production cost.
MPI’s June 2026 Situation and Outlook forecasts horticulture export revenue at a record $9.5 billion for the year to June 2026, up 7%, driven by record kiwifruit and apple volumes. The broader food and fibre sector is tracking toward $64.3 billion in exports. Those are strong numbers. But the biological foundations beneath them are weakening in ways that don’t show up in headline revenue figures until it is too late to fix cheaply.
Cold is not weather, it is infrastructure
For apples, kiwifruit, and avocados, cold winter nights are not a seasonal inconvenience. They are a biological trigger for spring flowering. Without sufficient chill hours, trees flower erratically, fruit set declines, and quality drops. These are not niche crops. Apples and kiwifruit are the volume drivers behind that $9.5 billion export figure.
Potatoes and onions face a different version of the same problem. Heat stress reduces tuber quality and produces smaller onion bulbs, cutting yields in a vegetable sector already under margin pressure from higher input and freight costs. MPI’s June outlook acknowledges that pressure directly.
The instrumental record confirms the direction. New Zealand’s annual average land-surface temperature has risen 1°C since records began, and frost days decreased at 10 of 30 measurement sites between 1972 and 2016. Traditional Māori knowledge of central North Island forests documents flowering time changes and declining fruit biomass going back to the 1950s. This is not a forecast. It is a trend with decades of evidence behind it.
Pests that used to die in winter now survive it
Warmer winters carry a second cost that compounds the first. Insects that previously could not survive cold New Zealand winters are increasingly persisting through the season. Queensland fruit fly faces increased risk of overwintering, which would expand its viable range. For exporters, a fruit fly incursion in a growing region carries market access consequences far beyond the spray bill.
Winter-active wasp sightings have increased. Livestock parasites on sheep and cattle are rising as winter no longer reliably suppresses populations. Plantation forests face more insect pressure. Mosquitoes, ants, and cattle ticks are expanding their range as temperature limits on distribution weaken.
Each of these carries a line item: more spray rounds, more monitoring, higher veterinary bills, or market access restrictions that hit export premiums.
The trajectory is not ambiguous
The Climate Change Commission’s 2026 National Climate Change Risk Assessment projects mean New Zealand temperatures rising 0.8°C to 1.4°C above the 1995-2014 baseline by 2050, with the North Island, New Zealand’s primary horticultural region, warming slightly more. The assessment notes that four of New Zealand’s most significant climate-related events have occurred in the last five years.
MPI frames El Niño conditions as “usually advantageous for the production and ripening of fruit crops” but concedes the production risks. Its December 2025 outlook noted that the previous season’s warm and windy spring caused tight feed and water levels in the eastern North Island, prompting some farmers to offload stock early. The same conditions are now forecast to return.
Researchers point to plant breeding and gene technologies as the primary adaptation pathway for developing cultivars suited to lower winter chill requirements. But breeding programmes operate on decade-long timelines. A grower planting an apple or kiwifruit block today is committing capital to a 20-30 year production cycle. The climate that block will face at maturity is not the climate it was designed for.
Every capital decision now carries climate risk
This is where the story stops being an environment story and becomes a business story. Varietal selection, orchard location, irrigation investment, insurance pricing, and lending terms all embed assumptions about seasonal reliability. In 2023, HortNZ’s submission to the Ministerial Inquiry on Land Use described crops contaminated by floodwaters, trees torn from the ground, and orchard infrastructure destroyed by Cyclone Gabrielle, calling the prospect of more frequent and intense cyclones “a massive threat to New Zealand’s domestic food supply and valuable crop exports.”
The $9.5 billion headline provides cover. But underneath it, growers are spending more to control pests that used to die in winter, managing fruit quality issues that did not exist a generation ago, and making multi-decade capital commitments against a seasonal baseline that is visibly shifting. The question is not whether those costs will eventually show up in the export numbers. It is whether growers, lenders, and insurers are pricing them in fast enough.
Sources
- 1News: El Niño now 95% likely as NZ faces warmer, drier winter (2026-06-02)
- 1News: Warming winters are bringing us insect pests and smaller fruit (2026-06-18)
- RNZ: Warming winters are changing NZ’s landscapes, bringing insect pests, smaller fruit and carbon loss (2026-06-18)
- MPI: Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries – June 2026 (2026-06)
- MPI: Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries – December 2025 (2025-12)
- Ministry for the Environment: State of New Zealand’s climate (2021-03-30)
- Climate Change Commission: 2026 National Climate Change Risk Assessment (2026)
- HortNZ: Submission on Ministerial Inquiry into Land Use (2023-04-06)