Food, fitness and farmers: this duo’s ideal business plan
Two mates with a plan to put produce on plates and turn a profit, Josh Ball and Josh Brooks-Duncan, have transplanted their friendship into a healthy business.
It is known in cycling parlance as “Everesting”, repeatedly climbing a hill on your bike until the total elevation gain equals 8838m, the height of Mount Everest.
Before the onset of the Covid pandemic, university mates Josh Ball and Josh Brooks-Duncan attempted the feat in Victoria’s alpine country near the tiny town of Licola, but didn’t quite make it.
“He tried to go over a bridge that said, ‘Do not ride your bike over’ and his wheel got caught in the bridge, and he went over his handlebars,” Ball says of his good mate.
So in April 2020, as Covid was taking hold, they did the next best thing, a virtual “Everesting”.
“We set up our bikes in our respective living rooms and did it over a bit of FaceTiming,” Ball adds. This time, they were successful, the virtual ride taking 21 hours straight to cover more than 200km. They have also completed a 1000km cycling trek around Tasmania.
It was their mutual love of cycling that brought them together at Melbourne’s RMIT University. Ball studied economics and finance, Brooks-Duncan supply-chain logistics.
There they came up with the idea of building a business to rescue fully edible fruit and vegetable produce left unsold simply because it didn’t meet cosmetic standards.
“We went down to Werribee, literally walked in through a farm gate and took a walk through a paddock of cauliflowers with a farmer. He’s like, ‘Oh that one is too big, that one is too small, that one is sunburnt and that one got nicked by a tractor tyre’. He was going to just plough them back into the soil. He was shocked when we asked to buy them. That was where it started,” Ball says.
They named their new company Farmers Pick, a direct-to-consumer grocery platform designed to redirect food destined for landfill.
The firm also creates a fairer model where farmers are paid for all of their produce, and consumers can access fresher, affordable groceries without compromising on values.
Each year, Australia wastes 7.3 million tonnes of food, costing the economy $20bn.
Farmers Pick rescues “imperfect” fruit and vegetables, near best-before pantry staples, and other essentials, delivering them at 30-50 per cent savings compared to major supermarkets. They even offer recipes to their customers.
The firm celebrates its fifth birthday in 2025 and is now generating 222 per cent year-on-year growth, with 150 staff and more than 25,000 customers in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and key regional areas.
In 2022, Farmers Pick raised just under $900,000 via a crowd-funding round and is now ploughing its profits back into the business.
“We broke break even last year, and are on track for profitability this year,” Ball says, noting the duo opted for the crowd-funding model over venture capital to keep their destiny in their own hands.
“We wanted that level of control at an early stage. We had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to achieve and where we wanted to get to in terms of our product, our operations and supply relationships, like our farmer relationships. We wanted to make sure that we got those done and were not dragged in another direction.”
But for Ball, there was also a deeply personal motivation for starting Farmers Pick. He was diagnosed as a haemophiliac at the age of two when, as he puts it, he “nearly bit his tongue off and bled for two weeks”.
Growing up he was in hospital at least once a fortnight, but sometimes even twice a week, with various injuries.
At one point he had a cracked skull, another time a bleed on the brain, and on other occasions debilitating muscle tears.
At the age of 15 the cartilage in his ankle started to degrade, to the point where it was almost arthritic and like a 90-year-old’s ankle. There was no cartilage left because of repeated bleeding.
“I ended up having an ankle fusion when I was 22. They literally bolted the joint together. To manage the pain through that period, I was on pretty heavy anti-inflammatories and analgesics,” Ball says.
“I remember when I got home after the surgery and I’d come off all the drugs, and I suddenly had no pain. It was this weird moment of clarity. I just remember sitting there thinking, ‘What’s actually going on in the world? It gave me this space to look up, to start thinking more broadly. That’s when I started really paying attention to the environment – climate issues, climate change – and began exploring: what are the underlying drivers? Why are these problems? How did they come to be? That was really the beginning of a shift for me.”
Three years later he and Brooks-Duncan started Farmers Pick.
“I started thinking about what I wanted to commit my working life to. You spend so much of your time working, and for me, it became about doing something every day that I care about, something that aligns with my personal purpose. Not just clipping the ticket and collecting a pay cheque,” he says.
Farmers Pick is now gearing up for a series of acquisitions to expand its product range and distribution footprint, including moving into meat deliveries.
Despite working together for five years, Ball and Brooks-Duncan remain good mates and still occasionally catch up for a ride on weekends or to share a glass of wine. The former is even back to doing light running after his successful ankle operation.
“I came from sales and marketing, he came very much from supply chain and logistics operations. I think from day one, we just drew a really clear line down the middle. So we always say, ‘I sell it, he delivers it’ and it works. There is clarity and accountability between the two of us,” Ball says.
But they will always be driven by a higher goal – to reduce food waste, help farmers and encourage more Australians to eat fresh fruit and vegetables.
“We’ve had a lot of feedback from customers that it has changed the diet of their whole family because they are eating better food. So that’s been something that we’ve really tried to lean into,” Ball says.
“Of course, just because Farmers Pick is driven by purpose doesn’t mean we don’t have debt, capital requirements and staffing requirements and all of that. But I think the purpose really ties it all together and helps drive the business forward and motivate our team, and also our customers, to try and do something a bit different.”
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