It is 10 years since farmers took their tractors to the road and drove to Canberra to press their case for Australians to buy locally-grown food, the Fair Dinkum Food campaign.

They demanded laws that make the country of origin labelling of food far more obvious and unambiguous to protect the livelihoods of Australian farmers and rural communities.

The significance of the campaign in Tasmania was the loss of a major potato supply contract to Simplot Australia, which was making chips for a fast food chain.

The TFGA Vegetable Council joined forces with activist and vegetable grower Richard Bovill to mount the tractor rally to draw public and political attention to the plight of Australian vegetable growers and to encourage them to choose Australian-made for both quality and loyalty. The rally began in in Tasmania and passed through Victoria and NSW, before culminating in a mass rally outside Parliament House in Canberra.

Last week in Tasmanian Country I referred to the fact that the Australian Government, some 10 years later to the day, had made a move in the right direction after consulting with the state and territory governments to change the requirements for country of origin labelling. That’s how long progress can take.

Others moved faster. Five years ago Simplot Australia, now the last remaining Australian vegetable processor, revealed a new Australian-grown logo and national advertising campaign for its Birds Eye range of vegetable products. The year before, McCain Foods had announced the closure of its Smithton vegetable processing plant, with production to move to New Zealand.

Simplot was motivated by polling that showed 90 per cent of Australians said they preferred to buy frozen vegetables that came from Australia because they wanted to support Australian farmers. The Birds Eye range identifies the Australian growers.

The 2005 Fair Dinkum Food campaign did lead to a number of immediate initiatives:

a federally-funded review of the industry
a Tasmanian Government-funded workforce development program and promotion of Tasmanian vegetables
implementation by the supermarket chains to increase the visibility of local products
the VegVision 2020 strategic plan.
Next Tuesday we will mark the 10th anniversary of the campaign with a media event at David Addison’s onion packing shed at Moriarty. We will assess the progress that has been made and what remains to be done.

Ten years ago one of the criticism levelled at the campaign was that it appealed to patriotism and encouraged protectionism when, in reality, our farmers should be looking to China, for instance, to market their produce; Australians would be guided by price before loyalty.

While price is important, the intervening years have shown that Australians do prefer to buy locally if they can easily identify the local product and if the price is competitive with imports. And, yes, we have been looking to China for marketing opportunities and we now have free trade agreements with China, Japan and South Korea.

Clearly, more work has to be done on the home front. We have to keep the pressure on governments to support the Tasmanian and Australian brands; we have to continue to press consumers to favour local produce; we have to continue to invest in agriculture and in research and development to improve our efficiency and therefore our cost and price competitiveness.
TFGA president Wayne Johnston