Blue Christmas as Covid threatens summer harvest

After years of drought and poor yields, farmers should be looking forward to bumper crops this season. The reality, however, is for more uncertainty, with doubts about how the bounty will make it from paddock to plate because of COVID-19 restrictions on workers, borders and trade. It is a problem that promises long-term consequences and is compounded as it flows through the supply chain from the farm to the supermarket shelf.

Warnings have been clearly signalled that border closures and other restrictions will affect the summer harvest. This has led some producers to restrict plantings for next year rather than waste money on crops that will have to be turned back into the soil. Restricted plantings mean today’s pandemic-inspired problems for agriculture will stretch further into the future than necessary.

Supermarkets have warned of food shortages for Christmas unless restrictions placed on warehouses are lifted soon. Woolworths, Coles, Aldi and independent supermarkets have told Victorian Jobs Minister Martin Pakula that supply chains that feed the state and the rest of the country will soon hit capacity constraints, making it impossible to catch up for the holiday rush. Retailers say restrictions on shift sizes at distribution points make it unlikely that supermarkets will meet the usual targets of having 15 per cent of their Christmas stock in stores by the end of September and 40 per cent by the end of October.

Coupled with the lack of capacity to harvest the nation’s food production, the outlook is that government-imposed conditions will make it harder to dig the economy out of recession. National Farmers Federation president Tony Mahar has cautioned that Australians face the prospect of higher food prices because of a shortage of workers. Primary producers traditionally have relied on backpackers, students and special visa workers from the Pacific Islands to harvest crops. Federal cabinet says it will consider incentives to get students and the unemployed into the regions to pick crops. This is welcome but may look better on paper than it will work in practice. Western Australia’s Work and Wander Out Yonder advertising campaign, which promotes the hard manual work of harvest as being an opportunity for city dwellers to take a welcome coastal retreat, underscores a disconnect that exists between the perception and reality of life in bush.

Crucial to keeping food producers in business and avoiding the threat of food price inflation down the track is open movement between states and a continued influx of workers from the Pacific Islands. The federal government has linked the two issues, with Agriculture Minister David Littleproud warning that farmers in Queensland, Tasmania and WA could miss out on foreign workers if their states do not sign up to the agriculture workers code. The code was adopted by other states and territories at the last national cabinet meeting and is designed to allow free movement across borders. Mr Littleproud says all Australians should be given the first chance to fill fruit- and vegetable-picking jobs. He says it will be challenging for the federal government to give states access to workers under the Pacific and seasonal workers program if they haven’t signed up to the code. Opening borders and lifting curfews and other restrictions must be a priority on all fronts.

Food writer John Lethlean has outlined the desperate future facing the once vibrant Melbourne restaurant scene. Lethlean says it is difficult to see how many will survive into next winter when the subsidies, presumably, are gone and the recession is biting harder. A similar fate is shared by thousands of small-business operators in the private sector, whether it be tourism, hospitality or other areas of service delivery that have been unable to trade because of government restrictions.

Food harvest provides a useful illustration of the urgency to get things back on track. Once spoiled, produce that has been left on the tree or in the paddock to rot cannot be recovered. Food shortages for Christmas are a prospect too bleak to contemplate. The answer does not lie in continuing to stifle economic activity, which leads to higher prices or, goodness forbid, government-sanctioned war-era rationing. Allowing people to get back to work and to move freely between jobs around the nation is the only sensible option.