Australian farmers who supply most of the nation’s winter strawberries are counting the cost of heavy rain, with one farm forced to dump 8 tonnes of rain damaged fruit in the past week.
David Carmichael crouched near a pile of rotting fruit at Palmview on the Sunshine Coast, explaining how growers had to pay people to pick the bruised and pitted strawberries, only to throw them away.
"We've got to pay wages to throw fruit away because we can't leave it on the bush [and spread fungal diseases]."
Agri-tourism is the way that one of the oldest pick-your-own strawberry farms on the Sunshine Coast has been able to survive and reduce waste. Strawberry Fields has scaled back production to 500,000 plants to focus on supplying the local market and their farm store and cafe.
"The 20 per cent that we managed to pick we decided to keep for the shop and we've been sorting through that and selling it at the door and that's been a lifeline," Mr Carmichael said.
"The premium grade would normally go to the wholesale market, but with all the rain damage we decided it was going to be too expensive to pack, they were going to get less than a punnet of strawberries per picked tray, so we just decided to sort it and do a big special in the shop to move fruit."
Source: abc.net.au