Harsh weather takes its toll on avocado crop

Their vision was designed to keep promoting the avocado industry and encouraging people to buy and eat the fruit.

AVO GROWERS: Sharon Ogden, Barry Trousdell, Michelle Trousdell and Roz Marden from Mt Binga Orchards at their stall at the Blackbutt Avocado Festival on September 8. Picture: Jessica McGrath

AVOCADO growers put on a display to show the paddock to plate reality at the Blackbutt food festival.

Platinum sponsors Mt Binga Orchards were the driving force behind the Blackbutt Avocado Festival from the beginning.

Mt Binga Orchards owner Barry Trousdell said their vision was designed to keep promoting the avocado industry and encouraging people to buy and eat the fruit.

"If we don't get out there and try and make people aware of it, how else are people going to start eating it,” he said.

When they started out in 2011, six out of ten Queenslanders ate avocados, now nine out of 10 favour the fruit.

An estimated 4,000 people visited Blackbutt for the third annual Blackbutt Avocado Festival on Saturday September 8.

"The festival is going to get bigger and better every year,” he said.

"We try to present the paddock to plate, where the avocado comes from and its nutritional benefit.”

The avocado industry's biggest challenge is the weather.

This year the orchard lost more than 500 trees to the frost, with most of these being very young trees.

The growers installed a frost fan to counter the cold weather, however the fan was on back order and arrived too late for this year's season.

"We're one of the first avocado growers in Queensland, if not Australia, with them,” Mr Trousdell said.

The 'tow and blow fan' from Hastings, New Zealand, is climate controlled and automatically turns on when temperatures reach 0.8 degrees and turn off at 1 degree.

The orchards are fitted with irrigation, to cope with the dry weather during the long avocado season from May to January.

"Its one of the few fruits you can price pick,” he said.

The avocado trees only have one predator to worry about - the spotting bug.

However, there are plenty of rewards in the avocado industry.

"I just like seeing them grow,” Mr Trousdell said.

The orchard employs up to 19 South Burnett residents to work on the farms during picking season.

Mt Binga Orchards are doing well this season, with 10,000 avocado trees ahead of other years.

"Every second year you get a bigger lot of crops,” he said.

The orchard has produced between 70,000 and 80,000 trays of avocados so far this year.

The flower buds on an avocado tree can support one or two avocados each, with one avocado tree limb having the ability to support up to 30 avocados.

South Burnett Food Ambassador Jason Ford used Mt Binga Orchard avocados in each of his cooking demonstrations at the Blackbutt Avocado Festival, making the likes of 'feta and corn fritters, served with crispy bacon and a pumpkin avocado salsa.'

"This region is a producer of really high quality avocados,” Mr Ford said.

It can be difficult to buy Blackbutt avocados, unless people buy them at the farm gate.

"When you have really high quality product, its in such demand that it just get bought up and sold to major outlets,” Mr Ford said.

"You just can't locally compete with the large buyers that buy the whole lot.”

Originally published as Harsh weather takes its toll on avocado crop