Growing North Queensland’s horticulture industry

By Ry Collins, General Manager, Bowen Gumlu Growers Association

Over the past twelve months, Bowen Gumlu Growers Association (BGGA) has embarked on a plan to grow and advance the North Queensland horticulture industry developing a course of action to reaffirm the region’s place as one of Queensland’s leading production areas and capitalising on our unique strengths, now and into the future. As of early 2022, this work has now been reflected in a new Strategic Plan for BGGA. The plan identifies 61 actions supporting our strategic focus in pillar areas of advocacy, development, workforce, promotion, services, events and governance. This plan aims to inject a renewed focus on the key opportunities to advance the industry in our region, defining how we will represent and provide vision to our farming community, laying the foundation for our industry to continue to expand and remain a pillar of North Queensland’s economic and social future. The plan seeks to support growth in investment, water, technology and export, whilst addressing our biggest challenges such as rising costs, agricultural waste and supporting the next generation of North Queensland growers. The National Farmers Federation has set the ambitious goal of creating a $100 billion agriculture industry by 2030 and to position our industry as a foundational pillar in Australia’s future prosperity. To achieve this, key growing regions such as North Queensland would effectively need to increase their output two-fold, to approximately $1.5 billion per annum of farm gate output. With much work ahead and a new strategic direction to guide our association, the future looks bright for growing the North.

Waste innovation supports sustainability

With the majority of growers in Northern Queensland located in close proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, the expectation of consumers, government and the community is that the industry must enhance the sustainability of its processes in order to preserve the surrounding environment for generations to come. For those in farming regions in Bowen, Gumlu or the Burdekin it’s of equal concern that there is a growing issue of agricultural plastic waste that threatens the ability of growers to operate sustainably and adds significant additional cost to effectively manage the issue. Larger than average volumes of trickle tape and plastic mulch have now become stockpiled due to massive increases to waste disposal costs and lack of recycling options in North Queensland. Late last year, BGGA coordinated a stakeholder forum of growers, local and State Government representatives and others from industry to better understand the extent of the issue and what was being done to address it. A number of potential regional recycling options were discussed along with growing council landfill costs, but it became apparent that further investigation into solutions and innovation that is occurring abroad to address waste issues was needed. Through industry connection, we were introduced to chemical engineering company, Zero Emissions Developments (ZED), who are pioneering new agplastic recycling methods to reuse waste trickle tape and plastic mulch in a range of products. A tour of their facility displayed a wide range of applications being undertaken by researchers and engineers through a process known as pyrolysis. This process is able to take a number of different plastic types, including ag-plastics, and turn them into outputs such as carbon, bio-diesel and graphene that can be made into new products, for example battery cells and even new trickle tape. Encouraged by our visit, the ZED team has made a visit to Bowen to meet with BGGA and the Whitsunday Regional Council to inspect sample ag-plastic feedstock and have recently secured a development site that will house their future multi-million-dollar bio-waste facility. We’re excited by the prospect of addressing this key challenge and will continue to work together to explore new developments to improve grower practice and support innovation as we progress toward a more sustainable future for our industry.

Plan for future: BGGA’s new Strategic Plan seeks to support growth in horticulture while address the industry’s biggest challenges.