Category Archives: Co-operatives

advocate, Alternatives, Co-operatives, Democratic food systems, Growth paradigm

Prospects for co-ops in Australia

The Co-operative Revolution – can it happen in Australia?

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 24th November, 2012

The National Co-operatives conference, held in Port Macquarie at the end of October, had two goals: to celebrate the successes of co-operatives in Australia, and internationally; and to identify opportunities for the sector to strengthen and expand.

A centrepiece of the conference was the release of new research mapping the extent of the co-operative sector in Australia by the Australia Institute. This research revealed that while most Australians (79%) are members of at least one co-operative or mutual financial institution – are you a member of the NRMA, for example? –  a small minority (16%) were aware of that fact. The report’s authors suggested that this low level of awareness of co-operatives – amongst both their own members, and the public generally – could be due to the fact that, unlike corporations, co-operatives spend relatively little on advertising and promoting themselves.

The take-out message was one of opportunity for the sector. Because co-operatives don’t have large advertising budgets, they deliver good value for money to their members; the report stated that an average mortgage with a building society or credit union, for example, costs around $75,000 less over the life of the loan than if it was taken out with a commercial bank. The challenge, it seems, lies mainly in better communicating the benefits of belonging to a co-operative.

From the Port Macquarie Co-op conference
From the Port Macquarie Co-op conference

Yet more is at stake than just brushing up marketing strategies. In my previous column I described the extraordinary revival of the co-operative movement in the UK, and how this had been built on a long process of internal reflection and a return to the basic core values of the movement.

This process of critical self-reflection is desperately needed in the co-operative movement in Australia. In his 2006 book, The Democracy Principle,  co-operative historian Gary Lewis (who was not present at Port Macquarie, unfortunately), delivered a scathing assessment of the many and continual failures of agricultural co-operatives to build a strong, cohesive, visionary and above all principled co-operative movement in this country.

While Lewis identified a strong confluence of external factors – geographical distance, parochialism and states rights, epochal shifts in global trade, ideological opponents, and a lack of supportive political leadership at the federal level, amongst others – it was the factors internal to individual co-operatives, and the movement as a whole, that have probably done most to stifle its potential. These internal factors include:

  • A marked preference for competition over co-operation – a failure of co-operatives to co-operate with each other
  • A first allegiance to commercial industries, and industry associations, rather than to the co-operative movement
  • A failure to invest in co-operative research and development, and co-operative extension services
  • A failure to invest in co-operative education, and thus a failure to capture the imagination of younger generations
  • A failure to invest in building umbrella institutions, and effective policy advocacy at the federal government level
  • The inability to establish a co-operative bank to finance co-operative ventures – a sine qua non of a vibrant ‘self-help’ movement

Cumulatively and collectively, these failures reflected ‘a triumph of the pragmatists over the idealists’, as well as the pursuit of ‘market share, competitiveness and growth for growth’s sake’, thus resulting in a ‘degrading of co-operative consciousness’ and ultimately a ‘short-sighted and stingy movement’.

In Port Macquarie, the process of critical reflection was beginning, albeit slowly. There was clear recognition of the need for a national council to advocate for the sector’s needs, and a commitment to bring this into existence was the conference’s most concrete outcome.

Achieving such an outcome will be testament to the extent to which the sector can truly ‘co-operate’. But the most exciting proposals came out of the the Youth Summit , where 30 delegates spent 2.5 hours engaged in asset mapping, brainstorming and dotmocracy to agree on a series of strategic initiatives to raise awareness of co-operatives amongst young people, and begin building a co-operative consciousness and sense of a movement. The brainstormed initiatives include a national road-trip, a youth festival, and getting co-operatives on the curricula of university business courses.

Co-operatives have a strong story to tell: Norco’s recent announcement of its $5.7 million profit for 2012, in difficult market conditions, is just one success among many. But the potential of the movement to be a powerful force for decent employment and strong economic development, in turbulent economic times, is yet to be realised in this country.

advocate, Co-operatives, Uncategorized

The ‘flight to trust’

Co-operatives on the march

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 27th October

2012 has been the International Year of Co-operatives, the first time that the United Nations has designated a year especially for this sector. According to Dame Pauline Green, President of the Internationa Co-operative Alliance, this decision was made in recognition of the ‘relevance of co-operatives as a sustainable and recession-resistant [business] model in times of continued international economic turbulence.’

So 2012 has been the year for ‘co-operatives to shine’, and that was the theme of the inaugural National Conference of Australian co-operatives, which took place this week in Port Macquarie’s Glasshouse centre. Over 300 delegates, representing co-operatives of all shapes and sizes from around Australia, some over 100 years old, some newly forming, participates in two days of talks and business clinics, celebrating the successes of co-operatives and the challenges ahead. I was lucky enough to be among them.

The co-operative story is indeed an impressive one. As it’s usually told, the story dates from 1844, when the famous ‘Rochdale pioneers’ agreed to work together, on a set of core principles and for their own mutual benefit, with the goal of providing unadulterated and fairly-priced food to their communities.

The co-operative revolution
The co-operative revolution

However, as Dr Chris Cooper, of the Co-operative College in the UK told us (quoting historian AM Carr-Saunders), ‘the co-operative ideal is as old as human society’. It is, rather, ‘the idea of conflict and competition as a principle of economic progress that is new’, with the foundational co-operative principles being ‘forgotten in the turmoil and disintegration of rapid economic change’.

Those words were written in 1938, but they are hardly less relevant today. In his closing address Professor Bob Morgan, Executive Director of Tranby Aboriginal College, observed that ‘we live in a society where common good and decency has been replaced by common greed and indecency.’ Professor Morgan reminded us that many of the core co-operative principles and values – self-help, self responsibility, equity, respect, concern for community, education and training, autonomy and independence, solidarity (co-operation among co-operatives)  – had been practiced by Aboriginal nations for tens of thousands of years, prior to the European colonisation of Australia.

The last forty years have not been easy for the co-operative sector, but there was a palpable sense at the conference that we may be on the cusp of a revival and renewal of co-ops in Australia. If the experience in the UK over the last few years is anything to go by, we can expect dramatic results.

Dr Cooper documented what he termed a ‘flight to trust’ that had taken place in the wake of two key events: the GFC (which started in the UK in 2006-7), and a sophisticated re-branding and re-launching of the Co-operative group of affiliated businesses (banking, retail, housing, manufacturing, travel, legal services, agriculture, funerals, schools and child care centres) in 2005. This re-launch followed an extended period of reflection in which the movement achieved real internal clarity about its own identity and its core message.

The Co-operative group alone now has 6 million members and 6000 retail outlets across the UK. The sector as a whole has 10.5 million members, a phenomenal increase on the 3.5 million members it had in 2007 ; and has set itself the ambitious target of reaching 20 million members by 2020. Its turnover rose by 20% in 2011 alone. In a stunning reversal of fortunes, and of the pattern in Australia in recent decades, the movement is growing via the acquisition of non-co-operative, or de-mutualised, businesses.

For example, the Co-operative Bank, which had 109 branches in 2009, now has nearly 1100. Two-thirds of the new branches are formerly de-mutualised branches that belonged to Lloyd’s Bank. In the 10 months since January this year, the Co-op Bank has 61% more personal accounts, and 21% more business accounts.

In a very important lesson for Australian co-operatives, Dr Cooper said that what has driven this extraordinary business success is the return to core values and principles, and their effective communication amongst members and the wider public. The co-op movement in the UK is aiming at nothing less than ‘transforming the economic system’, because ‘it’s a very old idea whose time has come once more.’

Next time I’ll look at some new research mapping the sector in Australia, the challenges it faces, and the opportunities before it.

advocate, Co-operatives, Fair Food systems, Food Hubs, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms

Food Hubs – essential infrastructure for a Fair Food System

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Food Hubs

A version of this article appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 21.4.12.

Last time I wrote about the efforts underway in Girgarre to turn a new page in the history of the Australian co-operative movement, by launching a ‘Food Hub’ manufacturing centre that is co-operatively owned and run by workers, growers and the broader community.

I’m happy to report that while Heinz has now sold its Girgarre site to another buyer, the Goulburn Valley Food Action Committee has found an alternative greenfield site in Kyabram, and are planning to launch the first of their new products, designed by Peter Russell-Clark, by the middle of May. The results of their feasibility study have now come in, and they show, according to Chairperson Les Cameron, that ‘demand for Australian product is greater than ever before…the Heinz approach of creating a product, marketing it and then trying to sell it through the major supermarkets is no longer the way to go. [The study] is showing a number of significant, medium-size companies are looking for Australian product; and sub groups who will not buy anything else.’

So far, so good. I’m following these developments with great interest. When their products are available in Coffs Harbour, I’ll be sure to let you know!

But back to the question: what is a Food Hub? In essence, it’s a conscious attempt to scale up local and regional food economies. If there’s been a single persistent and fairly persuasive criticism of the local food movement over the years, it’s this: that while its aims and principles might be great, and while farmers’ markets and community-supported agriculture might work quite well for smaller producers, local food as a whole actually fails to deliver the goods in terms of offering reliable markets with sufficient throughput and volumes for commercial-scale farmers.

That function, so this reasoning goes, can only be filled by central wholesale markets; or, in this country, by supermarket distribution centres.

The Food Hub is an attempt to tackle this criticism head-on.  Originating in the United States in the 1990s, Food Hubs have expanded across that country, with more than 100 in operation, and many experiencing strong growth and expansion. Their primary functions are typically the aggregation, marketing and distribution of local fresh and processed produce. In some ways they resemble a wholesaler, but with the key difference that their mandate is to source as much local produce as possible, and channel it into local businesses, institutions and households. In the process they create more demand for local food, help build the capacity of local producers, and get much better returns for farmers than they receive in the central market system.

All the things a Local Food Hub can do
All the things a Local Food Hub can do

Government purchasing power seems to have played a big role in fostering the growth of Food Hubs, with 40% counting among their clients public institutions such as schools and hospitals.

According to a recent survey of Food Hubs by the US Department of Agriculture, some of the longer-running hubs have become significant local businesses. One has 100 suppliers, including many small and mid-sized producers, and offers over 7,000 products. This Hub owns a 30,000 sq.ft. warehouse and 11 trucks, with 34 full-time employees and over US$6 million in sales in 2010.

But Food Hubs can do much more than aggregation, marketing and distribution. As in the Goulburn Valley, they can combine manufacturing and processing with innovative product development and multiple traineeships. The Local Food Hub in Charlottesville has a five-acre demonstration farm, where they run training days for local growers and offer apprenticeships and internships for the next generation of farmers. 20% of the food grown on this farm is donated to local food banks and anti-hunger organisations.

And so on. Because there’s no single business model, and because these hubs are locally-owned and controlled, responding to local needs and priorities, the forms they take will vary widely. That they are emerging and expanding at this point in time, when the existing food system is plagued by so many profound dysfunctionalities, is a cause for great optimism.

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advocate, Co-operatives, Corporate control of food, New market mechanisms, Supermarket Duopoly

Heinz Meanz Mean

Co-operation in the Goulburn Valley

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, on 31.3.12.

The spirit of co-operation lives – in the Goulburn Valley town of Girgarre. And just as the original Rochdale ethic of co-operation was born of the necessity of finding reliable sources of non-adulterated food, so the turn to co-operation in Girgarre has also been driven by necessity. Not of finding safe food, but of safeguarding jobs, businesses and livelihoods.

This necessity materialised when the chill winds of ‘globalisation’ swept through Girgarre (pop: 633) and the surrounding district. Those winds took the form of an announcement in May 2011 by the Heinz Corporation that it was closing its tomato processing plant and laying off 146 workers. Estimates suggest another 450 jobs will disappear through the flow-on effects; and the livelihoods of many tomato growers will also be put at risk.

Globalisation dictates that capital must flow to those places where it can be most profitably invested. In this instance, that ‘law’ required the closure of three Heinz factories in Australia and their relocation to lower cost New Zealand. The tomatoes will be sourced from even lower-cost Thailand. In announcing the closure, Heinz took a side swipe at Australia’s highly concentrated supermarket sector as a major reason why it was no longer profitable to maintain their operations here.

Within weeks of the closure being announced, a coalition of growers, workers and others in the local community began exploring what I would term ‘the Argentinian solution’. In late 2001, as the Argentinian economy was imploding under the burden of an unpayable debt, and workers were being laid off in their tens of thousands, a movement known as the fabricas recuperadas – ‘recovered factories’ – began.

What these workers did was not simply ‘occupy’ their workplaces in pursuit of demands for better wages and conditions. They literally took them over and made them productive as going concerns, run as co-operatives, in order to preserve their own jobs and livelihoods. Even as the economy has recovered, many of these worker co-ops have continued to exist, and some have thrived. The movement has been immortalised in The Take, a 2004 documentary made by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis.

The Take - the story of the 'recovered factories' movement in Argentina
The Take – the story of the ‘recovered factories’ movement in Argentina

What’s distinctive about Girgarre is that it’s not just workers involved in the push for the take-over (via purchase) of the Heinz factory and its rebirth as a co-op. It’s the workers in co-operation with the growers; and both in co-operation with the broader community. Remember that the history of co-operation in Australia has been marred by mutual suspicion between producer and consumer co-operatives, translating into a palpable failure to co-operate. This is a conscious attempt to turn a new page in that history.

One of the leading figures in this effort, Tony Webb of University Technology Sydney, told me that:

“The idea grew from just simply replacing Heinz with its out-dated model of competitive relations with suppliers and customers and production of a limited range of internationally branded products for the retail market.  We want to develop new niche markets in the retail and food service sectors for a wider range of agricultural products. The co-op will integrate local warehousing and distribution logistics and a regional food industry training centre on-site, and incorporate sustainable energy, water and waste practices into the production facilities. In short, it aims to build co-operative links between many of the elements of the paddock-to-plate food chain as part of a sustainable regional food hub.”

The breadth of this ambition, and the spirit of co-operation that the initiative has inspired to date, has also crossed party political lines, with the Goulburn Valley Food Action Committee (find it on Facebook!) attracting significant local, national and international interest. Celebrity Chef, Peter Russell Clarke, is helping out with the marketing campaign. Offers of finance to buy and equip the factory have been made.

Meanwhile, Heinz is refusing to sell the site to the co-operative, rejecting their offer of $750,000, three times what the company paid twenty years earlier. Worse, they have, according to Webb and his colleague Les Cameron of the National Food Institute, engaged in a ‘scorched earth’ policy of ‘industrial vandalism’ by stripping the plant of any and all equipment of value, even down to the rat-proof fencing.

But now momentum has been generated and the co-op members have the bit between their teeth. They are looking for a greenfield site, and are launching a campaign for one million Australians to contribute $50 each to become members of a national venture aimed at inspiring – and financing – similar Food Hub ventures elsewhere.

What’s a Food Hub, I hear you ask? More on that next time.

Update, October 2013 – The GV Food Co-op is now trading and inviting supportive members of the public to join as members. To learn more, visit their website: http://www.gvfoodcoop.com.au/

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advocate, Co-operatives, Coffs Coast, Fruit growing

Idealism and pragmatism – the Co-operative movement in Australia

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Co-ops in Australia

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, Saturday 17th March 2012.

Co-operatives represent the ideal of business with genuine ethics, not just window-dressing and ‘corporate social responsibility’ statements. From the social perspective, it’s hard, at least in theory, to get more ethical than the workers in a business also being the owners, and running it for their mutual benefit, rather than to maximise profits for distant shareholders.

As is so often the case, theory and ideals often crash against the harsh test of real life conditions, and human fallability. The ideal of a co-operative commonwealth, appealing to people’s higher values rather than just naked self-interest, is a powerful one, but in practice co-operatives have fallen far short of the vision of the Rochdale pioneers.

The case of farmer co-operatives in Australia, whose history was the topic of a book published in 2006 by Gary Lewis, called ‘The Democracy Principle’, is instructive.

For farmers, co-operation had an extremely sound economic rationale, as Lewis explains. The more farmers jointly could exert ‘ownership and control of the inputs, supply, processing and marketing of farm products’, the more they were able to take control of their own destinies, as regards avoiding the fate of being ‘price-takers’; and so better ensure their own viability.

The Coffs Coast region was home to one of Australia’s premier agricultural co-operatives: the Banana Growers Federation. Operating transportation services and a single marketing desk on behalf of its members, the BGF enabled NSW growers on the Coffs Coast to rise to a position of dominance in the Australian industry. It wasn’t by accident that the ‘Big Banana’ was established here as a tourist attraction. At its peak in the early 1970s, the BGF boasted around 18,000 grower-members.

The Big Banana, Pacific Highway, Coffs Harbour
The Big Banana, Pacific Highway, Coffs Harbour

There were many factors which brought about the demise of the banana industry in our region, and amongst them we have to include the self-interest of some growers who abandoned co-operative principles to pursue their own self-interest through separate deals with buying agents, undermining co-operative unity in the process. It’s been said to me that although the blueberry growers now enjoy a similarly strong marketing position to that once held by the BGF, through the single desk operated by Berry Exchange, the same dynamic that so afflicted the banana growers may already be underway.

History records that in 2004 the BGF was wound up with a mere 428 grower members. The country as a whole is losing farmers at a rapid rate. The fall in the number of dairy farms across Australia has been steep: from nearly 82,500 in 1950, to 7,500 in 2010. A further drop is expected now, with the impacts of the supermarket milk price war being passed down the supply chain.

Could it have been different? We’ll never know, of course, but certainly many farmers, and their leaders, did themselves no favours, according to Lewis, by effectively abandoning any genuine commitment to ‘the democracy principle’, and broader community and social welfare, in preference to their own narrow self-interest.

‘Farmers generally were inclined to squeeze every last drop from their co-ops’, he writes, ‘and neglected to invest in them adequately or in anything not immediately enhancing the bottom line, such as education or federations. With few exceptions, it was a short-sighted and stingy movement.’

The building of an effective co-operative movement in Australia – whether by farmers, workers, consumers, or all three – has, it would seem, been stymied by parochialism, inter-state rivalries, individualism, unhelpful legislation, the lack of substantial co-operative financing, and the inability to build a strong national movement promoting ‘co-operative unity and a co-operative consciousness’. Ironically, Lewis concludes, these are ‘all of the things which co-operative idealists had long argued for and which had been comprehensively quashed by pragmatists’.

The flame of co-operative idealism, however, is not yet quite snuffed out. It’s being revived, amongst other places, in a small town in western Victoria called Girgarre. Next time we’ll look at what’s happening there.

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advocate, Alternatives, Co-operatives, Growth paradigm

Co-operatives – business as unusual

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Not Business as Usual

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 3rd March 2012

The United Nations General Assembly, at its 65th plenary meeting on 18 December 2009, adopted Resolution 64/136, which proclaimed 2012 as ‘the International Year of Cooperatives’. This was in recognition of the role played by cooperatives in ‘promot[ing] the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people’, as well as their growing emergence as ‘a major factor of economic and social development’ and their ‘contribut[ion] to the eradication of poverty.’

To talk of the ‘growing emergence’ of cooperatives as major economic players is somewhat misleading. Cooperatives as business entities have a history dating back to the 18th century in England and France. The modern ‘cooperative movement’ as a distint entity dates to the formation of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in 1844, in Lancashire, England. Building on the ideas of factory owner, social reformer Robert Owen, and Dr William King, the Rochdale pioneers were motivated by the simple philosophy of self-help: they wanted access to quality (i.e. unadulterated) food at a fair price; and so they opened a member-owned food co-op.

IYCLogo_original

Trying to learn the lessons of the failures of many of the earliest cooperatives in the first decades of the 19th century, the Rochdale Pioneers set down a series of principles, which have formed the guiding compass of the cooperative movement ever since. They constitute what’s termed ‘the cooperative difference’; what it is that distinguishes cooperatives from traditional, privately-owned and operated, businesses.

As restated by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) in 1995, the key principles are as follows: open and voluntary membership, based on non-discrimination; democratic member control (one member, one vote); member economic participation, and reinvestment of the surplus to develop the cooperative and the cooperative movement; autonomy and independence, based on the value of self-help; education of cooperative members and the general public about the benefits of co-operation; co-operation among co-operatives – strengthen and build the movement; and concern for their communities.

From humble beginnings, the cooperative movement spread rapidly, and was widely embraced by farmers in Australia from the 1880s, beginning with dairy farmers on the NSW South Coast. However, for reasons I’ll look at it in a subsequent column, the cooperative movement in Australia never reached the high ideals or the vision of the Rochdale pioneers to ‘create a “Cooperative Commonwealth”, a democratic, social-economy rising from a decentralised network of consumer cooperatives (shops) linked to primary producer cooperatives through a giant wholesale trading entity creating capital to fund other cooperative enterprises in the services, manufacturing and tertiary sectors, coordinated and governed by a Cooperative Union, a grand “parliament”, of democratic organisations.’*

That said, the cooperative movement now numbers in the hundreds of thousands, and embraces over 1 billion members across the world, with over 100 million employees, more than all the transnational corporations ‘put together’, according to Dame Pauline Green, President of the ICA and currently in Australia promoting the International Year of the Cooperative. She adds that the  300 largest coops are together worth an impressive US$1.6 trillion.

The ICA’s aim is to make cooperatives ‘the fastest growing business model in the world by 2020.’ Encouraging trends, says Dame Pauline, include the 79% switch in deposits to the UK Cooperative Bank from the major high street banks ‘in the last two years’, a rapidly emerging cooperative renewable energy sector, and cooperatively-run schools. Dame Pauline speaks of a ‘cooperative renaissance’, led by ‘community-based cooperatives, people coming together and saying actually we can deal with this, we are going to lose our village shop if this goes on so let’s all fall in together as a cooperative and let’s keep our shop going.’**

What are the prospects for this renaissance in Australia? In a later column I’ll look at a project for a grower-worker-community-owned cooperative based out of a recently-closed Heinz plant in Girgarre, Victoria.

* This quote is from from Gary Lewis’ 2006 book, The Democracy Principle, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in the history of farmer coops in Australia. It’s held in the Coffs Harbour Library.

** The quotes from Dame Pauline Green are from an interview published on The Age’s “The Zone”, on February 27, 2012: http://www.theage.com.au/national/full-transcript-dame-pauline-green-20120226-1twcz.html.

advocate, Co-operatives, Coffs Coast, Fruit growing

Unity is power

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Bananas in Coffs Harbour – will the Big Banana be all that we have left?

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 2.4.11

Bananas have left their mark on Coffs Harbour. Our local credit union, the BCU, was established by banana growers in 1970, by members of the Banana Growers Federation who, according to the BCU website, ‘found it difficult to get finance through the banks of the day [so] they pooled resources, and formed a credit union, locals helping locals’.

Forty-six years ago, the Big Banana was inaugurated as one of the first of Australia’s ‘Big Things’ attractions. The very first, according to Wikipedia, was the Big Scotsman in Medindie, Adelaide, built in 1963.

Isn’t Wikipedia a goldmine of information? A wonderful modern resource at our fingertips, perfect for finding out all the facts about obscure and not-so-obscure people, phenomena and places. But beware: you can’t always trust everything you read in Wikipedia.

Take its entry for Coffs Harbour, for example. It says that the town ‘is the hub for a thriving banana industry’. The page was last modified on 16 March, 2011.  Whoever the contributors are to that page, they obviously haven’t spent much time – or any time – talking to a local banana grower, or looking at what’s been happening to the industry.

Coffs Harbour was the hub for a thriving banana industry – several decades ago. Today it’s the hub for what some are saying is an industry in terminal decline.  South Boambee grower Ted Knoblock, with over 30 years’ of experience in the local industry, is phasing out the last half dozen acres on his family property, because, despite Cyclone Yasi, ‘the long term future for bananas here is zero now’.

Ted acknowledges the role played by the mega-production in North Queensland in the local industry’s decline, but he also says that the local growers have to shoulder some of the responsibility for their current predicament:

“[The decline is] not all do with North Queensland, it’s to do with the incompetence of growers here who just won’t move on. They won’t use new ideas, and new ways of marketing. They want to be individual, but unity is power – and they won’t accept that, so they get stung every time in the markets.”

Unity is power – the phrase that echoes down the centuries, and is still rich with meaning today. For the alienated youth and workers of the Middle East, it means millions of people in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus and Sana’a, bravely staring down the guns and tanks of repressive dictators. For fruit growers on the Coffs Coast, it means organising into cooperatives, agreeing a single marketing strategy and sticking to it, so you can be price makers, not price takers.

That was the role played for 71 years by the Banana Growers Federation. At the time of its winding up, seven years ago almost to the day, long-time Woolgoolga grower Jim Limbert said that ‘without the BGF, the banana industry in NSW could not have prospered…The BGF was essential for the establishment of the industry in this state’.

There was no more powerful symbol of the decline of the banana industry than the decision by the-then remaining 428 members of the cooperative – down from 30,000 in the early 1970s – to wind it up in 2004. As to what’s replaced it, Ted Knoblock says that:

“We’ve got a marketing group at the moment – but one’s dropped out, and a couple don’t have any bananas. We’re not big enough to have any effect… If Yasi hadn’t come along, the industry would have been dead by the end of March this year. It’s that bad, nobody can afford to put fertiliser on ‘em…We used to put up to 800 cartons a week out of here – now we’re struggling to do 80…its uneconomic to irrigate them, with the high price of power.”

Can anything rescue an iconic industry that appears to be one step away from the grave? Ted reckons that a fair price for the grower might – if it was achievable:

“You’d need $16 a carton to make it viable, with the consumer paying $2.50 a kilo. Which is no different to what they’re paying now. But somebody in the middle’s getting a lot of it.”