Category Archives: New market mechanisms

advocate, Coffs Coast, Corporate control of food, Cost-price squeeze, Fair Food Week, Farmers Markets, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms, Small-scale farming, Supermarket Duopoly

Crowd-funding for farming

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 28th September, 2013

It’s been said many times: there is a crisis of profitability in Australian agriculture. Many factors are involved, including drought, the high Australian dollar, softening commodity prices, and the market power of the duopoly.

In May this year the Australian Financial Review reported that ‘at least 80 farming operations worth more than $1mn across Australia are in receivership or some form of financial distress.’

Debt levels feature prominently in this picture. According the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Research Economics and Science (ABARES), total farm debt for broad-acre farms averaged $476,000 as at 30 June, 2013. For dairy farms, average farm debt was $701,500. Debt levels in the Queensland beef industry have increased 500% in under 20 years, with most of the increase coming in the post-GFC period.

Commenting on the AFR report, financial blogger Steven Johnson of Intelligent Investor wrote,

“Any Australian farm funded with more than 50% debt is a Ponzi operation. There are thousands of them.”

Low interest rates bring some relief, and have been welcomed by the NFF. Before it left office, the ALP introduced a two-year Farm Finance package worth $420 mn of concessional loans (interest-only payments for 5 years, before reverting to market rates). But in the absence of a genuinely ‘farmer-friendly’ national food policy (which would likely include substantial tax breaks), this package, which is also supported by the incoming administration, may simply be deferring the inevitable.

At the other end of the scale, smaller scale farmers selling into niche local markets are successfully exploring a different financing alternative: crowd-funding. With its origins dating famously to Joseph Pulitzer’s 1884 campaign that raised $100,000 from 125,000 people to complete the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, crowd-funding has really taken off alongside the rise of the social network era of the internet. US platforms such as IndieGoGo, GiveForward and KickStarter have helped artists, musicians and others raise tens of millions of dollars, mostly in small donations from large numbers of individuals, to enable them to make music videos, write books, fund travel and a host of other projects. Pledges are made securely via encypted software (using a credit or debit card), as you would do if you were purchasing a book on Amazon.com, and typically are only redeemed if the campaign reaches 100% of its target figure within the alloted time frame.

In Australia, the Pozible website (www.pozible.com) was launched in May 2010, and by August 2013 had raised $13 mn for more than 4000 projects. These have included in the past few months: $12,000 to send 5 Australian farmers to the Via Campesina global conference in Jakarta (June 2013), $27,570 to finance an on-farm butchery at the free range heritage pig farm, Jonai Farms in Daylesford, Victoria (June 2013), and $29,250 to finance the making of Just Food, an Australian-first Fair Food documentary (August-September 2013).

In the Coffs region, the owners of Nana Glen Synchronicity Farm, Josh and Tomoko Allen, recently launched a pozible campaign, seeking to raise $30,000 to finance a ‘gourmet food hub’ based on their property. As well as creating a farm-gate store which will be an additional market outlet for local producers, they intend to build a community facility for educational workshops on organic farming, permaculture, aquaculture, shitake mushroom farming and a venue for long table farm lunches to support access to good food for community members on low incomes.

Synchronicity Farm Stall, Coffs Harbour Harbourside Market
Synchronicity Farm Stall, Coffs Harbour Harbourside Market

Josh and Tomoko sell their heirloom fruit and veg at the Sunday Harbourside Market and the Nana Glen general store. Their campaign has around one month to run.

The project is in its early days, but it would make an important addition to food retailing diversity for this region. The food hub sector in the US is booming, with over 100 now in existence. It’s also starting in Australia, with projects in Casey, Trentham, Shepparton and Kyabram, amongst others. For more information, visit www.foodhubs.org.au.

advocate, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms, Self-sufficiency, Small-scale farming

Vic Health’s Seed Challenge 2013

 

 

Sowing the Seed

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 4th May, 2013.

On Wednesday this week I was in Melbourne attending VicHealth’s ‘Sowing the Seed’ information day at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

VicHealth – the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation – is a semi-autonomous state government agency, funded through alcohol and tobacco taxes, that was established in 1987 with a mandate to promote good health for all Victorians. Over a number of years, VicHealth has funded significant research and food security projects that, cumulatively, have contributed to substantial increases in levels of awareness about these issues in Melbourne and regional Victoria.

In particular, VicHealth made a major strategic intervention with the launch in 2005 of a five-year, multi-million dollar project entitled Food for All. A primary objective of this project was to bring about policy change with regard to raising the prominence and priority of food security in council policy processes and documents. As I discovered last year while investigating urban and peri-urban agriculture in Melbourne, and its role in meeting climate change and food security challenges, the lasting impacts of the Food for All project can be seen in several Melbourne councils.

SEED & VH Logo_CMYK (2)

Sowing the Seed is a competitive grants program that VicHealth launched a few weeks ago.  Up to $100,000 is available for the two best projects that address the ‘challenge question’:

“How do we improve fruit and vegetable supply and access, as well as develop and promote a culture of healthy eating in Victoria?”

Unlike Food For All, Sowing the Seed is aimed mainly at non-profit and community groups, as well as small businesses. Attendees heard from some leading Melbourne-based innovators already working in this field, such as Chris Ennis from CERES Environmental Park and Organic Farm in Brunswick, Andrew Twaits of the veggieswap.com.au website, Cassie Duncan of Sustainable Table, and Bruce Neal, co-developer of the FoodSwitch app at Sydney University’s George Institute.

Criteria for successful projects are centred around innovation, collaboration and utilisation of digital technologies. Andrew Twaits’ Veggie Swap is a good example of how all three can be combined. The concept is simple: to encourage backyard gardeners to share and swap their surplus. Andrew, a new backyard gardener, had attended a couple of the neighbourhood veggie swaps that have begun to emerge in different parts of Melbourne in recent years, and was inspired by the range of produce that was available, as well as the social possibilities of these sorts of gatherings.

But he also saw there were limitations: the relative infrequency of the swaps which meant that some produce might not last that long; the common experience of an over-abundance of a few items which meant that often you walked away with many bunches of, say, kale that you didn’t necessarily want; and the lack of any commercial element which meant that non-growers couldn’t buy produce.

Fruit and Veg Vic

So Veggie Swap was created as an online harvest swap to overcome these sorts of issues. Members can see who is growing what in their neighbourhood, and organise their own swaps when and where they want. Non-growers can connect with growers to purchase some of their surplus. And physical swaps can be supported by greater coordination amongst participants, so avoiding the glut of a few items.

Innovative, collaborative and making great use of new technology. Veggie Swap has members Australia-wide, and is even spreading overseas.

With over 100 creative and passionate people wanting to submit applications, there’s every chance the Sowing the Seed challenge will generate the next Veggie Swap, or Sustainable Table. As the song says, “From little things, big things grow…”

Update – March 2014

The two winners of the Seed Challenge were 3000 acres and the Open Food Network.

About 3000 acres:

“We’re trying bridge the gap between traditional grassroot methods of growing food and city planning policies.

Sometimes, when people want to start a community garden, it can be hard to find a site or know who to talk to for access or planning approval. We’re helping to connect gardeners with empty land, and also with the right people in local government, to make sure everyone can work together.

Our website provides a map of actual and potential community garden sites around the city of Melbourne, Australia. A team including representatives from local government review potential sites and help make suitable land easier to find.

We provide ways for people to get in touch and organise around their community garden, as well as resources to help get started and make connections with land owners, local councils, and a whole range of resources.”

 

About the OFN:

“The Open Food Network is a community of people working together to build a free and open source platform that provides an open marketplace and supply network for local food, so that:

  • Eaters can “know their farmers” (where they are, how they farm, exactly what price they get) while still having wide choice and the ease and convenience of local pick-up and access.
  • Farmers can set their own prices, tell their own stories and choose who they trade with.
  • Ethical and diverse food enterprises rebuild local economies by supporting these farmers and eaters to distribute food”.

 

advocate, Coffs Coast, Democratic food systems, Fair Food systems, Farmers Markets, Food sovereignty, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms, Resilience, Small-scale farming

Local food production means resilience

Expanding trust horizons in Karangi

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 6th April, 2013

In February last year , Canada-based blogger Nicole Foss (www.automaticearth.com) spoke at the Cavanbagh Centre in Coffs Harbour, as part of her speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand. Nicole is now back in Australia for another speaking tour, though she won’t be visiting Coffs on this occasion.

In Coffs as elsewhere, Nicole offered her perspective on what she terms the unfolding ‘deflationary depression’, caused by the build-up of unsustainable debt levels throughout the global economy, combined with the anticipated impacts of dwindling supplies of cheap energy. Events in many countries in southern Europe would seem to offer early confirmation of her analysis.

Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleigh
Nicole Foss, aka Stoneleigh

Nicole also talked about the shrinking  ‘trust horizon’ that she believes will accompany a prolonged economic contraction. She argues that ‘relationships of trust are the glue that holds societies together’; and while in good times trust expands and the sense of ‘us vs them’ recedes, the opposite is true when hard times fall.

Putting this in a wider historical context, Dr Ben Habib of La Trobe University notes how the Chinese people coped with around 140 years of upheaval, revolution and war from the 1830s to the 1970s by ‘drawing on a cultural practice called guanxi (pronounced “gwan-shee”) which is about maintaining networks of ongoing personal relationships based on mutual benefit through reciprocal ties and obligations.” It was guanxi, according to Dr Habib, that enabled ‘greater social stability at the local level in China than would otherwise have existed during this turbulent period.’

Enter Sam Mihelffy, who migrated to the Coffs Coast with her husband Aaron and young family from Noosa five years ago. They bought a 34-acre property in Karangi, with established stands of citrus, pecans, macadamia, avocado and custard apples. They added some blueberries, apple trees, a vegie garden and most recently dragon fruit; and for the first time in their lives became farmers.

At the start, they weren’t ready for taking on this sort of life project. “It was mind-blowing”, says Sam. “We definitely moved in there with our hearts and not our heads, we didn’t really take on the concept of growing on such a large scale. It’s been a massive learning curve, and we’ve only really scratched the surface. But it’s something you evolve with, it’s really exciting.”

They diversified the farm by fencing it into three paddocks and adding a flock of 30 sheep, three alpacas, six ducks, a shetland pony and a pet pig. So was born the concept of ‘Me-Healthy Farm’ (a play on their name, Mihelffy), a ‘whole farm’ experience. Sam and Aaron opened the farm on Sundays for friends and the public to visit, buy fresh local produce at the farm shop (both from their own farm and nearby properties), and relax with a cup of coffee and some homemade cake, while kids could run around and feed the animals.

Sam Mihelffy at her Coffs Coast Growers Market stall
Sam Mihelffy at her Coffs Coast Growers Market stall

Providing that direct connection with farm animals was a big part of Sam’s motivation. “A lot of kids, even in Coffs Harbour, don’t have that experience, not even with the sheep”, says Sam. “A baby lamb being fed, they have no concept of that, so it’s really that we could show kids, hey look, this is what it’s like to live on a farm, come and have that experience for the day.”

And the concept proved very popular. “The fact that the kids could roam free was a great pull for parents”, Sam says.  “They got excited about the fact that they could chill out, the kids could feed the animals – there were so many different aspects. And get some fresh produce. It was a real experience – and we don’t have that happening any more [in modern society].”

Sadly though Sam and Aaron have had to pause it for the time being, because the amount of work involved in having their farm open every Sunday with a farm shop, was proving to be too much with a young family. But it’s time could come again – and given the need to strengthen our trust horizons – it might be sooner than later.

In Sam’s words, “This is where we should all be going. It’s really what we want to do. It wasn’t just about us – it was about our local community, [about] all the local products of the area. This is what we need to do, get back into that trading idea, someone specialises in garlic, someone specialises in ginger, someone’s doing beef, someone’s doing honey. If anything ever happens, we need to create that community where we can support each other.”

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, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms

Local Food = Jobs + Health + Sustainability

The Economics of Food Localisation

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 28.5.11

Local food and food sovereignty advocates identify many social and environmental reasons as to why the shift to local food systems is necessary and urgent.

And as I discussed a few weeks ago, this message is increasingly being heard and understood in government and policy circles, if the outcomes of Australia’s first-ever National Sustainable Food Summit are a reliable indicator.

The economic benefits of food localisation are also substantial, but there is little research on this area in Australia. Thankfully, this gap is now being filled by the pioneering work undertaken in the United States by Michael Shuman and his colleagues at BALLE, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.

Shuman, who visited Bellingen and Coffs Harbour in 2009 as part of a speaking tour of Australia, recently co-authored a report titled, ‘The 25% Shift: The Benefits of Food Localisation for Northeast Ohio & How to Realize Them.’[1]

Michael Shuman
Michael Shuman

As the title suggests, the centrepiece of the report was an economic impact modelling exercise. The authors examined the flow-on effect of all the economic actors – households, restaurants, grocery stores, wholesalers and distributors, and food manufacturers – of the 16 counties of the Northeast Ohio region (population, 4.14 million) increasing by a quarter the percentage of their food needs with produce sourced in the region itself.

This part of the US is economically depressed, with unemployment in excess of 10%, and major centres like Cleveland losing up to half their population since the 1950s, in the wake of the downscaling of the automobile and other heavy manufacturing industries.

At the same time, the local food movement is flourishing, with hundreds of established community gardens and urban farms in Cleveland and its surrounding towns, and dozens of new ones appearing each year; a ‘diversity of agricultural systems’, including ‘robust and cohesive farming communities’ such as the Amish and the Mennonites; innovative models such as farmer-consumer co-operatives; and ‘a rich history of businesses that support [these] farms through local purchasing and investment’.  The authors highlight many examples which reveal ‘the wholesale, restaurant and institutional buying power for local foods’.

So what did the study find? The conclusions were startling, showing that the 25% shift could:

  • ‘create 27,664 new jobs’, slashing the unemployment rate by an eighth;
  • ‘increase gross regional output by $4.2 billion’ and local and state revenues by $126 million;
  • ‘significantly improve air and water quality, lower the region’s carbon footprint, attract tourists, boost local entrepreneurship, and enhance civic pride’; and
  • ‘increase the food security of hundreds of thousands of people and reduce near-epidemic levels of obesity and type-II diabetes.’

Given its well-deserved reputation as a pioneer in local food, and given the thousands of dedicated individuals and businesses already working in the sector, one could be forgiven for thinking that the 25% shift would happen just by sheer momentum. But the authors highlight several weaknesses and barriers, including extensive poverty, significant numbers of food deserts, infrastructure gaps in wholesale, distribution and processing, a sceptical public, a lack of financial support for existing initiatives, and supply constraints.

Shuman and his colleagues are not fazed by the challenges, and offer 50 recommendations for how they can be overcome. These include innovative financing initiatives such as ‘revolving loan funds, municipal food bonds and a local stock market’; the creation of local business alliances to ‘facilitate peer learning and joint procurement co-operatives’; and the ‘deployment of a network of food-business incubators and ‘food hubs’ to ‘support a new generation of local food entrepreneurs.

 

This excellent study covers much more ground than I have described here; and anyone with a keen interest in this area should spend some time reading it.

[1] The full report is available for download at the following address: http://www.neofoodweb.org/sites/default/files/resources/the25shift-foodlocalizationintheNEOregion.pdf

advocate, Bellinger Valley, Fair Food systems, Food sovereignty, Local and regional food economies, New market mechanisms, Small-scale farming

Discovering the secret of being able to live your passion

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Small-scale farming in Thora, near Bellingen

Nick Rose

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 25.9.10

It’s no secret that small farmers are an endangered species. The logic of food production worldwide is ‘get big or get out’. Estimates suggest that Australia alone has lost as many as 50,000 farmers in the past 35 years.

 

The so-called ‘cost-price squeeze’ bears a lot of the blame. The cost of farm inputs, freight and packaging costs keep rising – particularly when the price of oil shoots up – while the farmgate price has barely moved for many items since 1980.

How do most farmers survive? Through off-farm income.

So it’s both refreshing and remarkable to discover small-scale growers who are now managing to support themselves entirely through the sales of their farm produce. This is Kathy Taylor and Bob Willis, of the Thora Valley, about 20 kms from Bellingen.

Their secret? Biodynamic methodologies, a willingness to experiment, and finding a reliable market in Melbourne through the Demeter Biodynamic Marketing Company.

Kathy and Bob have approximately one acre under intensive cultivation, with another acre used for mulch: the ‘agricultural silver’, as Kathy calls it.

Like many growers in the region, their principal commercial crop is garlic, a mix of Italian and Russian varieties. In the past year they’ve experimented with two other crops, both of which have been very successful.

The first was broccoli, a sprouting variety that produces side shoots after the initial head has been taken off. Kathy and Bob sowed 800 seedlings in March, and began harvesting in May. They sold the big heads locally, and since then have been sending the shoots – the ‘tender tops’ – down to the Demeter wholesalers in Melbourne, at a wholesale price of about $10 a kilo.

Why were the shoots not sold locally? Two main reasons. The first is the absurdities of the freight system, the logic of which is centralisation in the big wholesale markets: it costs Thora growers $8.80 to send one five-kilo box to Coffs Harbour, while they can send up to 11 boxes to Melbourne for a standard charge of $18.50. “It’s quite difficult to go against [the logic of the system] and do something different”, says Kathy.

The second reason is simply that Kathy and Bob’s tendertops would be perceived as competing against standard broccoli heads, whose price was much lower. But as Bob points out, normal broccoli production – whether conventional or organic – is highly energy intensive:

“They use a tractor to cultivate…a tractor to plant, and to weed [and] to mulch-mow…And to help them harvest…And the output of that is a head which is anywhere between 200 gms to 400 gms. And then it all starts again…”

Independently of fuel usage, there’s a lot of waste in such a system, because anywhere from 25-40% of the broccoli sold in retail outlets is the stalk, which most people just throw away. With tendertops, everything is used.

The system is labour-intensive rather than energy-intensive, as Bob explains,

“We cultivate with a tractor, but then we plant by hand, we weed by hand, we harvest by hand, and once the main head’s gone, we can get the secondary side-shoots. And that allows us to have these plants in here [for a whole season] – with one use of the tractor, and not multiple uses, and we get five-six kilos off a single plant.”

Their other main crop this year was tumeric, which they also sent to Melbourne, again at around $10 a kilo. Tumeric is a highly nutritious root that can be eaten fresh and added to almost any savoury dish. Unlike garlic, it can be left in the ground until the grower is ready to sell it.

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Ideally, Kathy and Bob would like to sell locally, and they have began experimenting with veggie boxes on a small scale, collaborating with a few other local growers, and with a small buyers’ group. They want to expand this in the coming years.

“I really think that in the future, the local sustainable seasonal veggies has got to be the way to go”, says Bob.