Recent weeks have seen scores of column inches written on the supposed trashing of vegetables in Tasmania because they don’t meet the Utopian shape, size and weight of the market – carrots too long, potatoes the wrong shape, etc.
There has been a fair bit of misrepresentation as well.
One supposed authority, the Eat Well Tas Report makes a lot of assertions but provides little in the way of facts to back up statements such as these:
“For most horticultural producers, it is simply a fact that 30-50 per cent of the produce they grow, harvest and grade and/or wash is unsuitable for first grade, retail sale. Much of this produce becomes second grade, which is either sold at a reduced price to be made into juices for example, or is fed to cattle.”
Not surprisingly, statements like this lead people to question why, with Tasmanians’ overall health the worst in the nation, farmers allow this to happen; why we grow food that is inappropriate for the market, that permit perfectly good food to go to waste, plough it back into the ground at the same time as a large proportion of the population has an appalling, unhealthy diet leading to the worst incidence of cardio-vascular disease in the country.
However, it’s not that simple.
All our produce is high quality, tasty and nutritious and value for money. We don’t do second best.
Farmers grow a range of products to satisfy a range of different markets; and each of these markets will have different customer specifications. What is being talked about here is simply produce that does not meet supermarket specifications. It could and does meet other customer specificationss – processed vegetables, minimal transformation, independent outlets, institutional or other food service agencies, stock feed, biomass, etc.
It is true that, from time to time, there are unexpected oversupplies of fresh produce. Farmers can’t control everything. They work at the mercy of the weather, international market prices, production dynamics in other market places etc etc. That’s a tough reality.
Where there is oversupply, many farmers already donate produce to Foodbank or Second Bite.
Having said that, farmers need to make a dollar out of every activity. To ensure that is possible, two things need to happen:
• farmers need to receive a realistic return for their investment and effort;
• all parts of a crop (or a beast) need to make a return at farm gate
The real problem is the dominant position of the two major supermarkets. Coles and Woolworths call the shots on the presentation of fresh vegetables. More than 80 per cent of product in Australia is sold through these two major retailers, both of whom are quite up front about driving costs back to supplier and pushing retail prices further down in search of ever-increasing market share.
There is little margin for investment and product diversity at the farm gate when channels to markets are so tightly controlled and the benefits of investments are captured further up the chain.
There is also the pertinent question of consumer demand. What do most people want in their vegetables? What do they want when they buy carrots? It’s all very well to say that people will eat misshapen fruit and vegetables. There are undoubtedly some who are happy to do this; but the vast majority are not. They buy what they expect to see in the supermarket. Experts say that to be successful new products must be demand-driven rather than supply-pull.
Farmers are astute business people. They have to be to survive in such a fast moving and volatile industry, where margins are very small. They simply wouldn’t do the same thing time after time, if they ended up making a loss on each crop.
Perhaps this is why we are seeing more farmers moving out of fresh market production into products where there is less volatility and better return to the farmer.
Perhaps Australian consumers now about to reap what they themselves have sown. If they are happy to accept imported price-driven products that compromise Australian quality and safety standards, then the inevitable result will be that local product will be driven out of the market. And we will all be the poorer as a result of that.
TFGA chief executive Jan Davis
