Commercial garlic growers accused of spreading misinformation, bullying and racially attacking small domestic producers

A commercial garlic grower in Hawke’s Bay has been accused of running a smear campaign on social media, spreading misinformation, bullying and racially attacking smaller domestic producers in a bid to discredit them online.

The row, which has largely taken place on the New Zealand Garlic Masters Facebook page, revolves around claims of an Allium White Rot (AWR) outbreak and which landowners are responsible for the fungal disease.

Chris Morrison of Te Mata Garlic faces charges of fear-mongering after he falsely claimed he was commissioned by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and other industry bodies to collect data from growers as part of an “industry survey”.

MPI denied it was investigating an AWR outbreak.

Morrison also posted a comment on the International Garlic Facebook page, which has 150,000 members, claiming there is a “massive outbreak of white rot in the South Island”.

Queenstown domestic garlic grower Megan Palmer said Morrison accused Otago growers of spreading AWR after other members expressed concerns about the diseased crop on the growing tips page.

She said the online debate escalated into personal attacks after Morrison’s comments were challenged.

“Chris started abusing one of the growers and then he started sending me abusive messages, basically saying what the hell I was talking about,” she said.

“Basically up until recently he had been taking advantage of people’s posts, but he used that to ironically promote his business as being free of white rot.”

RNZ has seen screenshots of Morrison’s social media comments in which he called Palmer a “Chinese troll” who was planting spies in the outbreak zone he called “Little Wuhan”.

Ms Palmer said she reported Mr Morrison’s “hate speech” on Facebook.

“I don’t think this is rational behavior by a person, especially a businessman. In my opinion, it’s irrational,” she said.

White rot is a devastating disease of garlic and onions that causes severe yield losses during the epidemic season.

RNZ understands one boutique grower stopped selling garlic earlier this year, partly because it felt stressed after being attacked by Morrison.

South Otago grower Rachel Cullen planted about 1200 cloves of different varieties of garlic last year, but when she was about to harvest in January she discovered one or two fields were diseased.

She suspected white rot had infected one or two pots of flowers, but said she had destroyed all the “bad stuff.”

Karen said she sought advice on Facebook and responded to Chris Morrison’s call for details about cases of white rot, sharing her location and the source of her seeds.

“He recognised it straight away and said ‘oops, white rot’,” she said.

“I told him I wasn’t sure, but he immediately became hostile to us.”

One of Morrison’s comments read: “Do you deny you have white rot and replanted your garlic? We call it FAFO gardening”.

FAFO is a slang term that stands for “F*** around and find out.”

Cullen said Morrison’s “aggressive” behaviour appeared to be commercially motivated.

“He’s a bully. I think he’s using that (social media page) as a means of advertising and pushing his own agenda. He’s looking for posts he can piggyback on and use his marketing to scare people into buying his stock,” she said.

Another domestic grower, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed garlic seeds they bought from Morrisons rotted in 2022.

The Te Mata Garlic website states that its growing areas are “white rot free”.

Chris Morrison declined to be interviewed but told RNZ via text message he stood by his comments.

“All the information we have is provided free of charge by growers,” he said.

“We strongly advise both growers to stop growing in the infected areas. If they call this bullying, so be it. This is a serious problem and puts our huge industry at risk.”

Morrison was a moderator of the 11,000-member New Zealand Garlic Masters Facebook group, but was removed by an administrator in June for “increasingly aggressive behaviour”.

Megan Palmer was also removed as host.

She complained to the Commerce Commission about Chris Morrison’s conduct, but the commission chose not to investigate.

John Murphy, chairman of the New Zealand Vegetable Association and a garlic grower, said there had been no large-scale outbreak of garlic resistance in New Zealand.

“White rot is present in every province, it’s present all over the world. But it’s fairly easy to control. You can’t say for sure that there’s no white rot in the Hawke’s Bay area,” he said.

Mr Murphy said Mr Morrison had caused unnecessary panic by collecting people’s information and misrepresenting who they were working for.

“I think there’s no merit to the acrimony we hear. Commercial growers compete with each other in the marketplace and sometimes that competition can get pretty intense. There’s no need to get too hung up on these things,” he said.

An MPI spokesman said it did not ask growers for detailed information about the alleged AWR outbreak.

They said: “MPI was aware of some social media comments earlier this year. We have already conducted some investigations.”

MPI said the disease has spread in New Zealand and is self-managed by growers and not generally monitored by the agency.