Elaine Reeves: Fresh and local is best

Hazel MacTavish-West embarked on a Churchill Fellowship to explore vegatables: shelf-life, packaging and ways of getting more of them into us.

Researcher Hazel MacTavish-West in a Parmigiano Reggiano factory.

“IT wasn’t easy to come up with one big message,” said Hazel MacTavish-West of her Churchill Fellowship quest for gen on vegetables in regard to such things as waste, shelf-life, packaging and ways of getting more of them into us.

Having read her 81-page report on 10 weeks in five countries, including 33 meetings, nine factory visits, nine trade fairs, six glasshouse visits, 25 supermarket reviews and six conferences, I can see her point.

I too am unable to come with an overarching narrative. So, I will take just some of the ways they do things differently in Europe from here, some of the premises plant scientist Hazel (aka VegDoctor) left Hobart with that were confounded, and what we might want to adopt and avoid.

How growers and processors here would love a two-year contract with a retailer, which provides the security for investment.

The ability to not sell any more than 30 per cent to the one retailer would be a boon too.

But let’s not have Value Chain Analysis that has sent businesses to the wall when their produce has been half a penny per kilo more than a competitor’s and which can demand DNA testing of vegetables (a practice introduced at the time of the horsemeat substitution racket).

Value-added pasta, dosed with vegetables.

Let’s avoid shrink-wrapped individual swedes or carrots, but how clever is Living Salad — the salads of lettuce, spinach and other leafy greens are sold while still growing in compost. At home, you water it regularly and harvest just as you are preparing your salad.

“You take that stuff home and all it does is get better,” Hazel said. “There is less stress effect on the leaf and the company does not have the costs of harvesting, washing and packaging.”

Her thoughts full of powders, pulverising and freeze drying, Hazel was eager to investigate what was being done with waste streams — the vegetables not pretty enough to make it into the packs and punnets.

She found waste was not the driver she had expected, that the strategy was to avoid waste through such means as selective breeding of seeds and choosing seed that suited soil conditions.

Seedless capsicums reduced both labour and factory waste, denser watermelons leaked less juice when they were diced.

A sandwich company developed a dense tomato that greatly reduced complaints about soggy sandwiches.

UK company Freshgro — which breeds, grows, washes and packs parsnips and carrots — through efficiencies in production and processing was now growing 60 per cent of what they were five years ago, but packing out the same volumes.

Hazel MacTavish-West at an Italian food stall.

In Europe, retailers require prepared foods to have a shelf life three days or so, but in Australia retailers require a shelf life of nine days. Hazel said the most consistent answer to her question “how could you make your current products with a longer shelf life was: Why would you want to? How is it then ‘fresh’?”

A briefer shelf life means a bigger variety of ingredients can be added to products such as salads and nourish bowls.

While processors in the UK may bring in produce from as far away as Africa, they do not ship finished product great distances.

The leafy greens may come from Spain, but they are washed and packed and have things added to them in the UK.

“In Australia we fly finished product around the country and into Asia,” Hazel said.

“And we have to have the same produce all over Australia, why?”

In Italy she saw farmers with small plots — of grapes, vegetables and maybe some fruit — but a co-operative mentality.

They all sent their produce to central packing and processing units.

“I think that’s the sort of thing we need to be doing more of but, in my observation, it does not sit well with most farmers, who are in their own family business and want to do it their way.

“We just can’t keep doing things the way we are, we have to be regional.”

Retailers and processors keep getting bigger and bigger and rationalising producers, whereas really we need more little ones, but then you get more variability — it’s not a simple thing.”

I will come back to Dr MacTavish-West’s report to look at packaging and regionalism. You can download it from www.churchilltrust.com.au