Four words: Profitability, Seasonality, Complexity, Narrative

I was incredibly humbled to represent Queensland fruit, vegetable, and nuts growers recently at the Food Security Parliamentary Inquiry Committee. I know there would have been many growers who would have loved to be there to tell their own story. We were given five minutes to tell the story of all horticulture in Queensland – not an easy ask. Here’s the gist of what we said.

Profitability

Our biggest risk to food security in Australia is grower viability.

Profit, people, planet is the only order food sustainability works. In the last three years growers in Australia have been subjected to a huge range of supply chain impacts and policy changes. Growers are anecdotally reporting to us that on average their productivity has decreased by a third during this time, and their costs have increased by 35 - 60%.

What industry can possibly survive these numbers? Last week, a grower called themselves an endangered species, I’m inclined to agree with them.

Seasonality

It is the seasonality of horticulture which I asserted as the single most poorly accounted feature of growing fresh produce contributing to poor government policy and decision making, leaving fresh produce at great risk into the future. 

Complexity

I spoke to the committee about agriculture being a complex beast with interactions between bio-physical, ecological, climatic, social, economic, and political influences. With further complexity added by horticulture not being a singular commodity industry. Horticulture does not have the luxury of clarity afforded to singular commodities such as cotton, beef, lamb, sugar cane which are able to give quite specific information on their needs.

I used the example of the strawberry to further explain. The same variety of strawberry is grown in the same region by two different growers. One grower chooses to grow in soil and the other hydroponically. We are still talking about the same variety of strawberry yet both growers have very different labour needs, inputs, and skill sets for their businesses.

Unfortunately, the complexity in the horticultural industry means that when we try to speak collectively about our issues, it often comes across as quite disjointed and fragmented. I implored the committee to see horticulture as immensely complex, rather than disjointed.  

Narrative

Finally, all Australian agriculture needs a new narrative; however, horticulture needs its own. Our complexity is the exact reason why horticulture needs to build more robust data, separate from any other agricultural singular commodities. For too long a lack of real data and on occasion the presence of incorrect or incomplete data has not allowed for good decision making in our sector. Being grouped with non-similar commodities only serves to mask potential opportunities and solutions to industry specific challenges.

The question we finished on was: Does Australia want locally grown fresh produce into the future?

If the answer is yes, then the first question to answer is how are we going to ensure growers continue to want to do this job when job satisfaction is currently so low and viability at such risk?