Fruit harvest: Labour and inputs key pressure for pickers

Low fruit prices at the checkout and high input costs mean a “set price” solution could be the answer to dwindling profit margins.

The summer fruitharvest is getting underway as orchardists begin picking their stone fruit.

And with more backpackers and pickers returning to Australia after the global pandemic, years-long labour shortages for the industry are beginning to ease.

Second-generation stone fruit grower Daniel Kezerle is in the throes of apricot harvest at Tatura, where he also grows apples, pears, peaches, and plums for the Zurcas family.

He said while pandemic-induced pressures on labour were easing, input costs coupled with supermarket prices was biting many growers.

“It’s more consumers not buying fruit, causing an oversupply in the market … causing such a low cost back to the orchardist,” Mr Kezerle said.

“But the same as a the dairy industry, we’re going to have to set a price, the only way is to fix a price, a set price back to the orchardists so we can make a little money, otherwise others will go broke.”

While backpackers and workers from the Pacific Islands helped make light work of harvest, Mr Kezerle said the cost of labour remained his greatest on-farm expense.

It’s the beginning of harvest for stone fruit grower Daniel Kezerle, at Tatura in Victoria. Picture: Zoe Phillips.

AusVeg chair Bill Bulmer, based in East Gippsland, said sentiment among horticultural producers at present was “very low”, particularly in his region where flood and fire has affected growers in recent months.

“We’ve always worked with Mother Nature, we’ve always worked with that … we’re not whinging and complaining about hat, we ride the high and low prices, but at the moment we’ve got an accumulation which is making even further outside pressures we have no control over, and that’s starting to bite,” he said.