As the problem of food waste continues to mount in Australia, a food policy researcher has raised concerns about the effect of food trends on farmers.
Key points:
- An agricultural economics researcher is concerned farmers are too focused on chasing consumer trends
- A grain analyst says Australian lentil plantings almost doubled when India removed import tariffs
- Renee Horvath says she wants to open a farm gate to cater to the local demand
Much like the fashion industry, food consumption follows trends.
But agricultural economics expert Wendy Umberger is worried farmers chasing those trends are feeding into an oversupply of some products and a shortage of others.
She said growers reacting to the ebbs and flows of a forever-changing market with short-lived trends was proving unsustainable to food security as a whole.
“Farmers are constantly on this treadmill of having to think about what others are doing and innovate,” Dr Umberger said.
“They have to be ready to deal with increasing input prices, regulations and export markets and meeting certain certifications.
“It would be excellent if everybody in the food system was thinking about climate change concerns, but what’s happening is, increasingly, we’re getting concerned farmers that are wanting to address the needs of the market.”
Diversifying domestic production
Renee Horvath, the last asparagus grower in the Riverland along the South Australian stretch of the Murray River, is also one of the region’s few vegetable producers.
While she has managed to find a niche market for her product, her wine and fruit-producing neighbours are reeling from the effects of a global downturn in trade, wetter weather conditions, and supermarket specifications.
In the past few years, many of the growers in Australia’s largest wine region have pulled out their vines and dumped fruit.
Ms Horvath moved her young family from a cattle property in central Victoria to Renmark North last year to take over the business after her brother-in-law suffered an injury.
The property also boasts loquat trees, apples, oranges, and bee hives to help with pollination.
“Having a diversity of crops is one of the reasons why we moved here,” she said.
While the sun dries next door’s wine grapes into sultanas on the vines and her neighbours plant more almond trees, Ms Horvarth wants her small family asparagus farm to continue to grow.
She currently sells her organic asparagus across the country but is focused on boosting supply to meet local demand for fresh vegetables.
“We’re trying to set up a farm gate at the house so that someone could roll up and get their own asparagus bunches,” Ms Horvarth said.
“They could just pay for it using a little tin, or I could have my son sit out the front.”
Vegetable crops used less than five per cent of the 7.8 million megalitres of irrigated water in the Murray Darling Basin, while pastures for cereal and grazing, cotton, fruit and nut trees used more than half of the water.
Eye to export trends
It is not just consumption trends in the domestic market that farmers are chasing.
Agricultural analyst Sean Hickey said plantings of lentils almost doubled when India, the world’s largest customer for the legume, removed import tariffs last year.
“There’s been a real surge in planting intentions and overall plantings for lentils as a result of the opening of the export market,” Mr Hickey said.
“The 10-year average for plantings has been around 380,000 hectares at a national level, but last year that was up around 600,000 hectares.”
Mr Hickey said a review into lentil tariffs was due early next year, while growers hoped India might also remove tariffs from chickpeas in the full trade agreement.
“But it could be upwards of a couple of seasons before you would see a real response to that reduction in tariffs on chickpeas,” he said.
All hands on deck
Back at Renmark North, Ms Horvath is busy preparing to harvest her asparaguses, which can sprout up to 18 centimetres a day.
The vegetables grow so fast she and her husband have to work shifts to keep on top of the harvest, otherwise, they “will just keep growing”, she says.
“We left one just to see how big it would grow once, and I think it got to around a metre and a half tall, which wouldn’t taste very nice,” Ms Horvath said.
“So we do three picks a day — my husband will pick in the morning, then I’ll do the afternoon and the evening.”
Ms Horvath said her two sons, a four-year-old and 18-month-old, also liked to get in and try to help.
“They’re growing faster than the asparagus, though,” she said.
“I can’t keep up.”
