The use of hydrogen cyanamide as a fruit spray has many Bay of Plenty people worried and has led one man, Tommy ‘Kapai' Wilson to say, 'I'm worried that a huge chemical footprint is being made that we are going to have to walk in.”

For around 20 years the horticulture industry in New Zealand has been using products like HiCane, Cyan and Breaker, all of which contain hydrogen cyanamide to promote bud break in fruit.
For almost the same length of time there have been people opposed to its use because they believe it to be harmful to the health of those using it, those who live nearby and even the land itself.
A community organisation called Pirirakau Incorporated, which operates in the Te Puna district of Tauranga, held a community meeting to voice their concerns about the use of hydrogen cyanamide in their neighbourhood last month.
The meeting was filmed by a ‘20/20' television crew and facilitated by Tauranga writer Tommy Wilson. It drew a crowd of about 50 people that included health professionals, kiwifruit growers, spraying contractors, residents and a representative of Environment BOP.
Spraying
Speakers at the meeting raised concerns about what they saw as health issues in their community that they believed might be caused by ‘chemical trespass' from spraying operations on the orchards in the district.
A former school board member also mentioned a pattern of bad behaviour recorded each year at the school in the couple of months following spraying.
The biggest complaint seemed to concern the issue of notification. Many of the people attending the meeting said they had never had any notification of spraying in the area, despite having lived in the district for many years.
Some of the concerns seemed to centre on a lack of awareness of the requirements to notify contained in EBOP's regional air plan. Following the Te Puna meeting, Pirirakau Inc. met with EBOP. They had what Tommy describes as a very worthwhile dialogue.
'We had three major issues: notification, compliance and long-term effects. We are still extremely concerned that residents are not being notified when spraying is about to take place and the signage is often too small or unnoticeable.
War stories
We also have a lot of ‘war stories' from people who have seen spraying carried out when the wind is blowing, and we still worry about all that spray being put onto the land and wonder what really happens to it, because the amount used each season is huge. I'm worried that a huge chemical footprint is being made that we are going to have to walk in.”
A couple of weeks after the Te Puna meeting a group of protestors gathered outside Zespri headquarters. They were pleased to find that Zespri staff spoke with them and assured them they were spending a lot of money researching alternatives to hydrogen cyanamide. The group told of school bus drivers in the Paengaroa area witnessing children running to catch the bus through clouds of the spray. The group are now collecting signatures for a petition to take to the government asking for the chemical to be banned.
Tommy Wilson says he doesn't really want to be known as ‘the Sheriff of HiCane'. 'I appreciate the good the kiwifruit industry does for this area but someone has to do something about the sprays.”