There can be no doubt that the future of Tasmanian agriculture is in Asian markets and that, of them, China is predominant.
Free trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea have rewritten the script for our future trade and, though the full benefits are often years down the track, this is where we should maintain our focus.
China is already our biggest trading partner. Apart from mining ores and processed metals, each year we sell the Chinese:
$31 million worth of dairy products
$3 million in fruit and vegetables
$3.2 million in meat
$17 million in seafood.
Our main production season is counter-seasonal with the northern hemisphere and therefore adds scope for us to expand product availability in the Chinese markets. At the same time, we are able to assist Chinese farmers in improving their own productivity.
But all in the Chinese garden is not rosy. To put it bluntly, there is some counterfeiting going on.
Not only are Australian brands being copied there, but there is also counterfeiting of Chinese domestic brands. It is not a case of flattery; it is a matter deception, of cheating the consumer.
New laws to try to counter the practice are, according to Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture Senator Richard Colbeck, “toothless”.
The level of the deception is extraordinary. Howard Hansen, managing director of Hansen Orchards in the Huon Valley, recently told Farm Weekly that for every kilogram of Tasmanian cherries exported to China, five kilograms are being counterfeited.
“It is becoming more common … copying our package precisely and selling a product that is from another part of the world, packaged as a Tasmanian product,” Hansen said.
He claimed that over the past 10 years, every brand of theirs had been counterfeited.
The point is it should be clearly evident when counterfeit Tasmanian products are on the market in China because the Tasmanian produce is counter-seasonal and, in the case of cherries, only available for a couple of months every year.
“We keep our customers informed about when the season is so they know if there are Tasmanian cherries being sold in November they are not authentic Tasmanian cherries because our season is January and February,” Hansen said.
This is a phenomenon we have not experienced for the best part of 30 years when the Japanese successfully adapted western technologies to produce European-style products that were, at first, cheap and of low quality but which, in time, improved and gave a new meaning to “Made in Japan”, particularly with goods such as watches, cameras and high-end electric goods.
Clearly, this can and probably will happen with the reputation of goods “Made in China”.
However, the food commodities that are so vital to Tasmania’s exports must not have their reputation compromised by lower quality lookalikes or counterfeits. Australia must insist on firm action by Chinese authorities to protect our reputation and ensure that duping their own consumers is not conducive to the intrinsic merits of free trade between our two countries.
TFGA president Wayne Johnston
