A poster telling the story of how a pair of Chinese farmers saved the kūmara (sweet potato).

There may be no food that unifies as many as the humble kūmara, also known as sweet potato or 番薯. I remember growing up in my grandparents’ house in Guangdong, where 番薯 was always a staple at breakfast. It was the most humble food, the only source of sustenance during famines of the past. In Aotearoa, kūmara is one of the most important crops; the Polynesian ancestors of Māori brought kūmara as a food plant when they arrived in Aotearoa back in the 13th century. The kūmara is more than a vegetable—it is a symbol that sustains and connects generations of inhabitants to place and home, an object of love and devotion and a protector for tough times. No matter where, the 番薯 and the kūmara find themselves as extensions of memories and containers of stories.

This particular story stems from two Chinese farmers, Joe and Fay Gock.

Joe and Fay Gock first came to Aotearoa as Chinese refugees, both fleeing from the Japanese occupation of China during World War II. Joe worked with his father in a market garden in Te Matau-a-Māui (Hawke’s Bay), which later relocated to Tāmaki, while Fay worked at her father’s fruit shop on Karangahape Road. They first met when Joe was making a produce delivery to Fay’s father’s shop, and were married not long after. Together, the Gocks started their own agricultural business, growing a variety of produce from brussel sprouts to watermelons. They soon became the largest market garden in Mangere.

The Gocks first began planting kūmara from spare kūmara plants given by their neighbor, Hiko Raniera Wilson. At the time, black rot was spreading rapidly across the North Island, where almost all kūmara were grown. It was a deadly fungal disease that devastated the crops, threatening to wipe out entire kūmara populations. As Northern farmers scrambled to protect their tubers, the Gocks developed a disease-resistant strain of kūmara, Owairaka Red, and gifted them to kūmara farmers across Northland. Today, Owairaka Red is the main commercial kūmara crop grown in Aotearoa.