Apple and pear prices sending farmers broke

Farmers like Don Nightingale are ripping up their orchards in the face of some of the worst wholesale prices on record.

While the price of an iceberg lettuce might be sending shoppers broke, the cost of an Aussie apple or pear is doing the same thing to the farmers who grew them.

In a bid to save the industry, growers are being asked to rip out their worst performing trees and ramp up exports to help correct an oversupplied domestic market that’s returning some of the worst prices to farmers on record.

Don Nightingale with apple trees he has ripped out from his property at Wandiligong. Picture: Kirrily Carberry

Industry body Apple and Pear Australia chief executive Phil Turnbull said every grower needed to be part of the solution.

“The apple market has become oversupplied with unsustainably low wholesale prices. The pear market continues to struggle with the overhang of fruit once destined for a canning market that has since all but disappeared. Low prices, discounting by retailers and low-priced commodity varieties making club varieties look expensive means poor returns all around,” Mr Turnbull said in an open letter to the industry.

He said increasing demand was one lever the industry could work on to push up prices. There would have to be a significant uplift though, given production of the highest graded fruit, known as class 1 apples, was up 26 per cent in 2021 to 232,000 tonnes and production volumes are only expected to increase due to new high-density plantings and new varieties of the fruit.

Picture: Kirrily Carberry

“We need to export meaningful volumes of Class 1 tonnes to reduce our dependence on the domestic market … We are asking growers to consider their poorest performing blocks and what future, if any, these have. Be part of the solution,” Mr Turnbull said.

Apple farmer Don Nightingale, whose family runs Nightingale Bros in Wandiligong, in northeastern Victoria, has been aggressively pulling out their oldest blocks.

“There’s a glut of fruit and we’re always removing orchard, but this year we’ve accelerated and taken out 20ha,” he said.

Mr Nightingale said their better orchards produced more than 80 tonnes, whereas the ones they were pulling out were producing half of that.

“We just can’t afford to be working on these old blocks, we have to get them out of the ground. If every grower takes out 20ha, the problem will be solved,” he said.

Mooroopna orchardist Peter Hall said the industry needed to do a better job at promoting the value of its crops.

“Apple and pear consumption is 50 per cent higher in the EU than Australia; let’s improve this. You can’t shrink your way to greatness,” Mr Hall said.

He conceded that canning pears were in oversupply and rationalisation might be needed to correct the problem, but said better collaboration with the retailers and better industry collaboration was what the industry needed.

“If retailers or buyers don’t value the crop, the signal sent to producers is to grow the cheapest crop possible which may lead to poorer customer experience. It’s a downward spiral.”