For a while now, Australian growers have been despairing over dumping tonnes of perfectly good fruit that was too small or odd-shaped to find a market. The sad cases of strawberry sabotage only crippled sales even more, costing the industry millions of dollars. Adrian and Mandy Schultz surely felt the impact of a strawberry glut and falling prices on their small farm at Wamuran, north of Brisbane.
However, the family has been fighting back by freezing and stockpiling some of the strawberries destined to be dumped. Apart from that, they mobilised customers through a Facebook group, encouraging them to meet Mandy and buy her excess stock at what she calls "car park parties" set up in the suburbs.
The family's growing season has ended but their "car park parties" have expanded to include new suburbs, cities and towns, finding a use for their frozen strawberries and surplus frozen fruit from other farms.
"This time last year we thought we were really clever and excited, we had 500 people that got involved with our group," Ms Schultz told abc.net.au. "Because we started helping other farmers, that group has now hit over 5,100."
Freeze drying a solution to tonnes of waste
But it's another value-added product that has even greater potential: freeze-dried strawberries. Freeze drying extends the shelf life of perishable fruit and finds a use for berries marked by rain. Ms Schutlz said freeze-dried, preservative-free strawberry powder was also popular with cooks. After last year's test run proved popular, the family loaded up a tonne of reject strawberries and trucked them off to a freeze-drying factory as a positive step towards improving farm turnover.