By Jess Baker
With strawberry prices in Queensland at an all-time low, and no end in sight for lockdowns in NSW and Victoria, Granite Belt growers are foreshadowing another difficult summer season.
Stanthorpe strawberry and apple grower Nathan Baronio said NSW is a “huge market” for local produce in ordinary times, but less so during periods of shutdown when restaurant, cafe, and dessert shop trade is limited.
“If lockdowns don’t ease by the time our season really gets going it will significantly impact us and anyone who grows any produce that really needs visual purchasing,” Nathan said.
“If New South Wales doesn’t open up and the demand of strawberries (doesn’t increase) it’ll make the price lower to the point where it might not even be feasible to pick.”
A spokesperson for the association of Queensland Strawberry Growers said punnets of strawberries were widely available across the state for less than $2, with Woolworths selling at $1.90, Coles at $1.70, and Aldi at $0.99.
“Meaning, farmers are actively losing around 50 cents for every sale and are unable to cover the most basic of costs if demand doesn’t increase,” the spokesperson said.
“If this continues, devastatingly, strawberry farmers may be forced to pick and dump their strawberries or walk away from whole fields with fruit left to rot.”
Nathan said if the price of punnets of strawberries is still around $1 in the summer, when the cost of production is higher, Granite Belt growers will suffer significant losses.
“You’re losing money hand over fist at that price, especially with our season because it’s harder to grow strawberries in the summer than it is in the winter,” he said.
Despite the very real threat lockdowns pose on local growers’ upcoming strawberry season, Nathan said his farm, Eastern Colour, has been lucky in some way.
Finding adequate labour to pick produce has been a difficult – and sometimes impossible – task since Australia closed its international borders at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Yet, Eastern Colour has not only retained a large number of workers from the Pacific Islands throughout the pandemic, it has gained dozens more.
“(The labour situation) for us is better than last year because we’ve got more Pacific labour. But if you don’t have Pacific labour, it’s worse than last year,” Nathan said.
“We have got 80 Pacific Island workers at the moment and we will be getting another 60, which will account for maybe 60 per cent of our workforce.
“The strawberries are really labour-intensive so you need big numbers to be able to operate the farm, whereas if you had 60 people picking apples you’d pick a hell of a lot of hectares.”
Nathan said if lockdowns in NSW and Victoria were to remain, people intending to work in those states might instead work in Stanthorpe.
However, a large workforce will mean very little if demand for, and prices of, punnets of strawberries do not soon increase in Queensland.
