Ashbern Farm: Back from the brink of disaster after strawberry crisis

IT’S onwards and upwards for Ashbern Farms in the wake of this year’s strawberry tampering crisis, writes JAMES WAGSTAFF.

On the rebound: Brendon Hoyle of Ashbern Farms on his strawberry farm at Stanthorpe in southeast Queensland. Picture: James Wagstaff

THE memories of this year’s strawberry tampering crisis are still pretty raw for grower Brendon Hoyle.

“There was just no escaping it,” said Brendon, a director of Ashbern Farms strawberry business in southeast Queensland that grows 1.9 million plants and produces about 1300 tonnes of the fruit a year.

“The market dried up so suddenly and, because strawberries are such a perishable product, you’ve just got no leeway. If you can’t pick it today, you’ve literally got to make a decision whether you keep it or not.”

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But by no means was Ashbern Farms alone in their despair. In the weeks after the discovery in early September of need­les in strawberries from another Queensland grower — and subsequent “copycat” incidents across the nation — the Australian strawberry industry ground to a halt as consumption plummeted on the back of safety fears.

“We had to drop 60 per cent of the farm in a matter of four days,” Brendon said.

“Every day we made a decision in the morning based on whether we had a market for that fruit or not. If there was no market, there was no point even picking it.

“Each day ... the market was shrinking. We were just dropping blocks — spraying them off.”

It also forced a radical change of thinking at Ashbern Farm. Days after the initial needle discovery, the business installed a $30,000 metal detector which scans all fruit along the packing line.

“We had to think very quickly because when you have no market tomorrow you start to panic,” he said.

“We made the decision (about the metal detector) very early on because it was the only way we were going to give confidence back to our customers.”

Brendon said that within a week consumer demand started to return to more normal levels.

“It felt like four weeks but it was only a week where the market was not there,” he said.

GROWTH SPURT

BRENDON, a former Zimbabwe tobacco and rose farmer, runs Ashbern Farms with his wife Ashleigh (Ash) and business partners Jon and Bernadine (Bern) Carmichael.

Jon’s family have been involved in the strawberry-growing business for 35 years and Brendon worked for them for a decade, before they formed Ashbern Farms two years ago.

They grow 34ha of strawberries in two locations — in the shadows on the Glass House Mountains on the Sunshine Coast and at Stanthorpe in the Granite Ridge region.

The 20ha Sunshine Coast property focuses on the winter production of commercial and organic strawberries while the 14ha at Stanthorpe is set up for summer production, from ­October to May, and includes a pick-your-own enterprise.

On the Sunshine Coast, yields average about 750g for each of the 1.2 million strawberry plants planted while at Stanthorpe — where there is a longer growing season — they aim for 1.25-1.5kg from each of the 700,000 plants.

Brendon said this produced about 1300 tonnes of fruit a year, the majority of which was sold to major supermarket chains — Woolworths, Coles and Aldi — with some fruit destined to wholesale and overseas markets.

Berry bliss: Brendon Hoyle of Ashbern Farms says most fruit is sold to the major supermarkets with a small proportion exported.

BED HEADS

AT the Stanthorpe farm, which The Weekly Times visited last week, strawberries are grown on 35cm-high, plastic-covered beds with plants about 35cm apart. Beds are formed and plastic and irrigation laid in late February and March, ahead of planting in May. The plants remain fairly dormant over winter but grow quickly during spring, producing the ripe fruit in time for harvest to start by October.

Brendon said strawberry farming was very labour intensive with all planting and harvest done by hand. Ashbern Farms employs about 90 staff during peak periods.

Brendon said the soils between the two properties varied greatly.

At Stanthorpe they are mostly granite sand — “very abrasive, not a lot of waterholding capability”.

“They have good drainage and are good to work with ­although there are a lot of granite boulders in the Granite Belt, so we are always farming around them.”

DRINKS BREAK

BRENDON said that strawberry plants could get quite thirsty, depending on weather conditions.

Water is stored in dams on the farms and is delivered to the plants by trickle irrigation through a tape that runs the entire length of the bed.

Brendon said emitters spaced every 20cm directed the water right into the root zone “so in terms of efficiency of water, is it probably as good as you can get”.

Rain events can effect strawberries — “they literally just disintegrate on the plastic” — and so too can insect damage. Fungus and other issues are countered either with sprays or with beneficial insects through an integrated pest management program.

At harvest, each plant is picked every third day with fruit placed into trays on trolleys which straddle the rows. At the end of the row, the trays are then weighed and put on a pallet and taken to the farms’ coldroom facilities.

“Each of the blocks are a specified length so we can get that fruit off fast and into the cold room as quickly as possible ... because that is when your shelf life and quality really counts,” Brendon said.

The premium fruit goes into a 250g punnet while “anything that is slightly blemished, slightly dull in colour” is packed into a larger 500g pack.

Metal detector.

PEAKS AND TROUGHS

BRENDON said strawberry prices were very weather and supply dependent.

Ashleigh is responsible for marketing and has travelled to Hong Kong and Singapore to study markets. Ashbern Farms also exports fruit to New Zealand and China, with demand particularly strong during winter. They grow for a shelf life of more than a week to 10 days.

“Our biggest aim is the shelf life so we do everything nutritionally — making sure the crop has everything it needs — as well as investing in the cold chain,” he said.

He said the summer production was shaping up nicely with good rain in late October,

Looking forward, Brendon said they were happy with the current size of the operation.

“Our biggest focus is becoming more sustainable in every way — packaging, becoming more efficient ... it’s not getting bigger, it’s just getting better,” he said.