Spring Future Orchards® Walk – Stanthorpe

Nic Finger is a director of Fruit Help, a horticultural consultancy group based in Victoria, Australia.

Nic grew up on his family’s apple orchard in Victoria’s Yarra Valley region. After a couple of university degrees, extensive travel (if looking at orchards counts!) and a few years based in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, Nic spends most of his time between apple and pear orchards in the Goulburn Valley and Yarra Valley.

Nic’s technical orchard consultancy is predominantly based ‘on the numbers’ reflecting his studies and data-driven approach to most tasks. In addition to grower decision support, Nic also assists growers with orchard development planning and runs a suite of on-farm research projects each year trialling new techniques and technology.

Rob Blakey is the R&D Manager at Stemilt Growers in Washington state, one of the largest and leading apple, pear, and cherry grower-packer-marketers in the US. Rob grew up and studied in eastern South Africa, earning his PhD in avocado postharvest physiology. Rob worked at Westfalia Fruit in South Africa and the UK as a horticultural researcher in avocados, moved to Washington state in 2016 to work briefly at Washington State University as a postharvest extension agent before moving to Stemilt. Rob manages both the R&D and new variety programmes at Stemilt.

Angus Hogan is the Horticulture Project Lead at SwarmFarm Robotics, a company delivering autonomous solutions to the Australian agriculture industry. Angus comes from an irrigated cropping and livestock farming family, has a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering and is completing a Graduate Certificate of Precision Agriculture. Prior to starting this role he was the Fuse Technologies Product Manager at AGCO, where he was responsible for product introduction, marketing strategy, dealer development and product support for AGCO’s precision ag portfolio across Australia and New Zealand. Angus is based in Shepparton where he is leading the Hort Innovation project: “AP16005 – Developing agri-tech solutions to the Australian apple industry”, a project that is developing commercial solutions to utilise variable rate chemical flower thinning as a tool for the better management of crop load.