Sweet taste of locally made success

WHEN Rex Little talks about the fruit trees that help to make his famous jams, he is not talking about acres of orchards.

Rex Little

WHEN Rex Little talks about the fruit trees that help to make his famous jams, he is not talking about acres of orchards.

On his tiny 2ha Yackandandah farm in northeastern Victoria, Mr Little has one loquat tree, three cumquat, four orange, a laden lemon tree and small groves of morello cherries, red figs and quinces.

The former food technologist speaks lovingly of the 12 jams, two jellies and 11 sauces he makes under his boutique Yackandandah Jams label, all brewed and bottled in the small shed beside his trees.

"What's my marketing plan, you ask?" he says with a grin. "Pretty simple, really; if I make a jam I like then I figure there must be some other bastard out there who will like it too -- you don't need many trees if you are only selling small volumes of high quality fruit jam."

Mr Little's farm is clearly home to an artisan, cottage business, not one normally linked to the mega-volumes demanded by Australia's two largest food retailers, Coles and Woolworths.

Yet Mr Little, who also buys a large quantity of produce from other farmers to meet demand for the brand, this year has had 400,000 jars of his famous lemon curd stocked in all 908 Woolworths and 800 Coles supermarkets, while his raspberry and blackberry apple jams, made with locally-grown Yackandandah and Murray River fruit, has just made an appearance on the shelves of eight Woolworths stores in northeast Victoria and Melbourne.

It is all part of the growing trend by Coles and Woolworths to portray themselves as the friend of battling farmers, who for too long have been squeezed too hard by the purchasing domination of the supermarket duopoly.

Woolworths, in particular, has adopted a new strategy to promote small locally-sourced brands in its regional stores, even if the farm businesses are only capable of supplying enough meat, cheese, salami, juice, cakes or jam for a few shops at a time.

Last month Woolworths completed a similar trial in northern NSW with seven dairy farmers in the Manning Valley near Taree. It bought fresh milk from them, had it processed under contract at a nearby Norco dairy, and then sold the clearly-branded Manning Valley-produced milk on behalf of the farmers under a new "Farmers Own" label - complete with a picture of the local farmer - in nearby Woolworths stores for $1.65 a litre.

Woolworths managing director Tjeerd Jegen said the milk walked off the shelves; a result that returned more profit to the local farmers than the contentious cut-price $1/L home-brand milk, while also meeting growing demand for local products.

The milk experiment - which effectively bypasses the big fresh milk processors such as Fonterra, Murray Goulburn and Lion - will now be extended to other regions in Australia.

Trials by Woolworths with locally made jams in the Blue Mountains early this year also delivered much better sales than expected.

"In our consumer focus groups when we ask why they want to eat local food, there is always a clear and accurate belief expressed that Australian food is of a higher quality, more clean and pristine, and safer and healthier to eat," Mr Jegen said.