Whitsunday farmers to walk out of the fruit and vegetable industry

A Whitsunday fruit and vegetable farmer says a “worrying” number of local growers are on the verge of stopping production in the region if they have as bad a year as in 2023.

You should never in a country like Australia who produced enough food to 60 to 80 million people, you should never have a population that struggles to afford food for their people”. Picture: Contributed

A Whitsunday fruit and vegetable farmer says a “worrying” number of local growers are on the verge of stopping production in the region if they have as bad a year as in 2023.

This comes as supermarkets have been put on notice for charging too much for local fresh produce, with many calling for an inquiry led by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Owner of Bowen farm Phantom Produce and president of the Bowen Gumlu Growers Association Carl Walker said his farm, like many others, had not been making a good profit in the past year, as their production costs rose while their return did not.

“I can’t make 5 per cent mark up, just, and that’s surviving,” Mr Walker said.

“Some are not surviving.

“I’ve talked to growers in this region who have told me, if this year is anything like 2023, they will close the doors.”

When asked how many growers that would represent for the region, Mr Walker stated that it was “enough to make is very worrying”.

A survey published in July by peak body AUSVEG found 34 per cent of vegetable growers were considering leaving the industry in the next 12 months, the Sunday Mail reported.

Bowen Gumlu Growers Association general manager Ry Collins and president Carl Walker at Walker Farms on Tuesday, October 12, 2021. Picture: Kirra Grimes

‘Families bypass the fresh food section’

Another Bowen mango grower, who did not want to be identified, stating this could impact some of his contracts with supermarkets, said he did not have good return on his mangoes for the past five or six years, to the point that he did not pick up any last year as he knew he would not make any profit out of them.

But for him, it’s not as simple an answer as saying prices are too low for growers as they have “the responsibility to match what they are growing to what the demand is”.

Federal Member for Dawson Andrew Willcox backed calls for an inquiry into supermarket prices, stating that if farmers were to walk away, there would be cause for concern for food security.

“A review isn’t going to go far enough,” Mr Willcox said.

“The ACCC has the expertise and the ability to do something about this issue, and the last thing we need are more politicians who don’t have the intricate understanding of market and pricing policies just sitting around asking questions.

“This is not only impacting family budgets in Dawson it is now starting to impact the health of families living here.

“We’re seeing reports of families bypass the fresh food section in their local supermarkets altogether and instead opt for cheaper, unhealthy pre-packaged meals.”

Dawson MP Andrew Willcox. Picture: Contributed

Farmers ‘look at other ways of making money’

Bowen Gumlu Growers Association CEO Ry Collins said most farmers would not move away from farming completely but look at switching to cattle farming or sugarcane.

“If market conditions don’t approve, they’ll have to look at other ways of making money,” Mr Collins said.

“We’ve got a lot of growers who are mixed growers, so even if fruit and vegetables are a big part of their business, they also have livestock and sugarcane and they dabble in this and dabble in that.

“So they might not get completely be out of farming but might pull back on the fruit vegetables and sort of push their interest in another direction.”

Owner of Bowen farm Phantom Produce Carl Walker speaks out on the opacity of supermarket fruit and vegetable prices.

Mr Walker said a lot of the farmers in the region are also people close to retirement age who have to decide whether they are ready to “risk retirement” to keep farming.

‘Price that a grower is getting is no different to what it was 10 years ago really’

Prices can differ depending on the seasons, with farmers having experienced overproduction in the past season, leaving some growers to not pick up the produce, knowing they won’t be able to sell it.

Bowen special mangoes from Corrick Plains. Image: Contributed.

“The thing is the actual price that a grower is getting is no different to what it was 10 years ago really,” Mr Collins said.

“It would be one thing if growers were getting low price and we were seeing low price in the supermarkets, but most of Australians would agree that things in the supermarket have just really gone up and up.

“Say you’re selling a kilo of tomatoes for $1.50, that’s what a farmer would have gotten on average last year … and then a supermarket will go and sell it for $6 a kilo.

“How do they determine that price, which is a high price from the consumer perspective but obviously the money is not flowing through to the farmer.”

‘Try to be the good guys and improve’

Mr Collins said that as supermarkets are now under scrutiny, there would most likely “try to be the good guys and improve their performance and public perception for the next couple of months”.

But that it “goes in cycles”.

He said one solution would be making mandatory the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct, which is implemented only on a voluntary basis at the moment and is under review.