David Tatman broke with tradition switching from wholesale to farmers’ markets
BREAKING with tradition and switching from wholesale markets to farmers’ markets helped the Tatmans save their family farm. Sarah Hudson reports
THE banks were threatening foreclosure.
The farm was set to be sold.
And the accountant shrugged his shoulders, unsure of a solution.
It was at this point that organic vegetable farmers David Tatman and his wife, Lisa, came up with a radical plan.
The plan was this: Limit sales to wholesale markets along Australia’s eastern seaboard, sell most of their product at Victorian farmers’ markets, reduce overall tonnage but increase the variety of crops.
“We had six months to decide whether we’d sell the farm and do something different,” says David, who has a total of 50 hectares over two certified organic properties east of Ballarat.
“The banks had come in and said, ‘What are you doing?’ and that they would probably have to foreclose on us.
“The accountant said we might be making $1200 from one pallet sent to Brisbane or Sydney (wholesale markets), but we were losing money after transport, packaging, wages and costs were taken out. We’d been making losses for so long.
“I didn’t want to sell the farm. I wanted to save it. And so we decided to do farmers’ markets.”
Four years ago Spring Creek Organics made its farmers’ market debut in Ballarat.
Now the farm operation attends 17 markets - with frequent requests made from other markets for their attendance - and in May opened their own farm shop.
From selling a handful of vegetable varieties to wholesale markets, but in large quantities, they instead boosted crop numbers to 42 lines, including heirloom carrots and beetroots, and reduced tonnage.
“I don’t know how we got to where we are now,” David says. “One minute we’re doing one market on a Saturday and now we’re doing on average four on a Saturday and one on a Sunday.
“We do less but get more. We have half the costs, but still get the same or more money for the product, about retail price.
“I’d never really heard about them or thought about them before, but farmers’ markets saved us. I wouldn’t be farming now without them.”
David’s conversion to the farmers’ market fraternity is all the more remarkable given his life-long connection to wholesale markets.
The 43-year-old grew up on his family’s vegetable farm at Pearcedale, on the Mornington Peninsula, which was initially run by his father, Geoff, as a conventional farm, but became certified organic in 1982.
“Dad was one of the first farmers in Australia to become certified. He saw it as an opportunity,” David says. “As a conventional farmer back then, he wasn’t using many chemical fertilisers anyway, so it wasn’t so hard for him to go organic.
“He disliked spraying and so it was easy for him to go organic.”
At its peak, his father sold about 10 tonnes of vegetables a week, in about six lines, to wholesale markets.
Never the academic type, David was on a tractor as soon as he could work the clutch, from the age of 11, completing his five-year market gardening apprenticeship from 16.
“I did the tractor work because Dad would always be rough and ready with the ground work. I did it by instinct.”
David says because he had always known organics and wholesale markets, that’s the way he continued his own farming when he moved to Ballarat, for Lisa’s work as an ultrasound stenographer, two decades ago.
After a bumpy start, the Tatmans hit their strides with two properties - in Navigators and Dunnstown - in the late 1990s, when they began to supply Sydney, Brisbane and
Melbourne wholesale markets, with products including silverbeet, turnips and swede.
“We went from a ute to an eight-pallet truck to a semi making runs twice a week,” he says. But then, he says, the wholesale markets began to change. Costs rose and competition increased.
“Some days wholesale was quite profitable, but now it’s not worth doing for us,” says David, who has two full-time staff and six part-time staff.
“Wages have gone up, the cost of everything else has gone up - petrol, freight, packing - but the wholesale prices for our produce hasn’t gone up. It’s still the same price now that we got 10 years ago.
“There’s also more producers competing, so the same piece of the pie is getting smaller and it makes the wholesale price go down. If there’s four growers growing parsnips that’s too much. It’s not profitable.”
It was when he lost a major wholesale buyer, who bought about 50 per cent of his product, that the Tatmans opted to sell to farmers’ markets.
Now they have more than 40 lines which include heirloom beetroots (pink, orange and red), as well as carrots (white, yellow and purple) and spaghetti squash - “Because I’m the only one growing it, I’m sought after,” David says.
“With farmers’ markets you have to have something quirky and different.”
Each week he sells roughly 10 tonnes of produce, working throughout the year with alternating crops.
The Spring Creek Organic farm soil varies between red volcanic, sandy loam and black sticky floodplains, on which David applies pelletised fertiliser and blood and bone for each crop.
Crops are sprayed with fish emulsion when irrigating - the Tatmans have access to an 80 megalitre bore water entitlement.
The family’s success has been hard-earned, working seven days a week all weeks of the year - although, David adds, they have roped in their three children along the way.
Charlie, 8, happily serves customers at markets, with his teachers raving about his maths and interpersonal skills, while Gus, 10, and Amber 11, are also happy to help.
“If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be doing farmers’ markets I would have said that was a load of rubbish,” David says. “We are on a good thing with them - this is our best year because of the markets.”
Farm facts
SPRING CREEK ORGANICS
David and Lisa Tatman, and their three children, run Spring Creek Organics, farming seasonal certified organic vegetables on two properties, totalling 50 hectares in Dunnstown and Navigators, east of Ballarat.
The couple converted from supplying wholesale markets in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to supplying 17 farmers’ markets around Victoria, when wholesale markets became unprofitable.
They have 42 lines of produce and specialise in niche products such as heirloom beetroots and carrots as well as spaghetti squash.
Phone (03) 5334 7838
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