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vegetablesWA CEO’s Report
BY MANUS STOCKDALE ACTING CEO, VEGETABLESWA
As Western Australia prepares for the opening of the state and international borders and the inevitable increase in COVID-19 cases, vegetablesWA is working hard to assist our grower members to have measures in place to keep their businesses operating.
We welcome the announcement of the reopening of the state and look forward to easier movements of produce, inputs and workers across Australia.
vegetablesWA has working with industry and the WA Government to learn from the rest of Australia’s experiences, so we are best prepared for the COVID-19 situation. Definitions of close contacts, access to rapid antigen tests and isolation times are key questions that we have been seeking clarity about on behalf of industry. Michael Bartholomew, vegetablesWA’s new Regional Development Officer, has commenced the delivery of the WA components of the Hort Innovationfunded VegNET 3.0 project and brings new knowledge and enthusiasm to the project. Michael will work with our accomplished extension officer Truyen Vo to gain experience and we look forward to him developing and providing valuable assistance to the WA vegetable industry. The Building Horticulture Business Capacity project, which builds on the success of the Vegetable Benchmarking project, is up and running with more than 20 vegetable growers already participating. The project — funded by the WA Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, the Agricultural Produce Commission and Hort Innovation — has been expanded to include other WA horticulture industries, with the pome industry the first to sign up. vegetablesWA is working with Planfarm to deliver the project, which connect horticultural businesses with professional business analysis and advice.
f THE state government plans to eliminate certain plastic packaging from retail vegetables and other produce.
I have continued to focus on increasing vegetablesWA’s engagement with members in the first part of 2022 with myself and other members of the team meeting and working Labour and rising input costs continue to be key topics of discussion. with growers in the Carnarvon, Geraldton, Gingin, Carabooda and Myalup areas. Labour and rising input costs continue to be key topics of discussion across the state with additional region issues with changes to water licensing and availability hot topics for others.
Seeking favourable outcomes on water allocation for ourmembers.
f VEGETABLESWA has attended regular meetings with growers in the region regarding the Gnangara Water Allocation Plan.
vegetablesWA is committed to representing the interests of WA growers in the local and national forums that we attend and ensuring that government and industry decision makers are aware of the sector’s needs and concerns. Our recent representation activities have included: • North Wanneroo Water Allocation — vegetablesWA has attended regular meetings with growers in the region regarding the Gnangara
Water Allocation Plan. We have engaged with the Water Minister, other horticultural industry associations and hydrological experts to seek favourable outcomes for our members. • Biosecurity — vegetablesWA has worked with DPIRD to advocate for the maintenance of movement restrictions for horticultural produce that may introduce new pests to WA such as serpentine leaf minor. • WA Plan on Plastics — vegetablesWA has raised industries concerns about the impact of the state government’s plan to eliminate certain plastic packaging from retail vegetables and other produce. We have secured a commitment from DWER to establish an agricultural working group to inform the development and implementation of the plastics regulations.
As 2022 gets underway, vegetablesWA will be developing a strategic direction that will involve a range of engagement with our grower members and stakeholders.
We will be sending out a survey through our communications over the coming weeks, so be sure to have your say about the services and priorities that you feel vegetablesWA should focus on.
MORE INFORMATION
Manus Stockdale, phone 0448 897 652 or
manus.stockdale@vegetableswa.com.au
vegetablesWA President’s Report
BY DAN KUZMICICH PRESIDENT, VEGETABLESWA
Summer is certainly here and has hit us with a vengeance.
Greetings to growers and industry members. I trust everyone enjoyed their Christmas Break and New Year celebrations.
Summer has certainly brought in some very hot weather across the state. As I am writing this report, the forecast for the next six days is hovering around 40ºC in Carnarvon, with similar conditions in the Metro and South-West regions as well.
Many of the growers in my region are busy with ‘cleanup’ land preparation activities and other groundwork, to get ready for the seedlings to arrive for the new season plantings.
I am sure that you are all aware of the increasing input costs this year — fertilisers, freight and labour are just a few to mention, with prices that have gone through the roof. This is a very real issue that many growers around the state are fully aware of. Carnarvon Growers Association (CGA) have stepped up to the plate by spending more than $2 million on stock to ensure that growers not only have access to supply, but due to the early purchase, can keep costs down, allowing growers to have a decent start to the year ahead. It is important to evaluate how we can find efficiencies in our operations and manage the impact of this situation. This will help us to understand our viability and find strategies to manage these very demanding conditions. To that end, vegetablesWA is still recruiting participants for the Building Horticulture Business Capacity program, which is available to all the vegetable and pome growers. There are currently only eight spots available to vegetable growers, and five for pome growers in the project. You may find significant value by being involved. Have a chat with Bryn Edwards about how you can benefit and use some real-time data to make good decisions for your business. vegetablesWA has also been facilitating the Human Resources, Industrial Relations (HR/IR) and Business Extension, which is initiated and funded by the Agricultural Produce Commission — Vegetable Producers Committee (APC VPC). This project will end in June this year. You can find a lot of support about managing employees on the vegetablesWA website, with useful material to access including templates and details about HR/IR matters for businesses. As Molly Meldrum would say: ‘do yourself a favour and have a look.’ This is valuable information. If you need more details, feel free to contact vegetablesWA HR/IR consultant Stephen Farrell on 0455 833 352. There is no cost for this service.
Some good news is that the prices for vegetables across the board appear to remain quite respectable with reading the recent Perth Market price reports. As growers in the Perth region and Southwest regions are in full flight with harvesting, labour continues to be an issue particularly managing the current WA COVID-19 outbreak with Omicron.
It is the general view that the new AG Visa will further assist with the labour issues we are facing; we just need it to be operational. The Federal and State Governments need to layout a clear proposal on how the government will encourage other countries to engage with this new AG visa. So far, it seems, only one country, Indonesia, is in talks with the Australian Government. For me, the wheels are turning too slowly, and some urgency needs to be applied to give industry the confidence that AG Visa will be part of the solution.
In the meantime, collaboration is key. It is pleasing to see that some growers are working together to utilise the limited workforce in Carnarvon and has been a common talking point in many conversations amongst us in recent times.
On finishing this report, I have just heard that a two-metre river is coming today, which is always good news for us living and working in the Gascoyne. I wish everyone every success with their harvest periods this year. As always, if you have any concerns, please do not hesitate to contact vegetablesWA for assistance.
Collaboration is key.
MORE INFORMATION
Contact Dan Kuzmicich on 0408 910 761 or
damir.kuzmicich@bigpond.com
Technology opens up new markets
Welcome to vegetablesdirect
BY MANUS STOCKDALE ACTING CEO, VEGETABLESWA
A search engine that helps you to find new suppliers and be found by new buyers.
f OUR vision for the app is to make growers more visible to buyers across the globe.
Wherever and whenever there have been unlimited demands met with scarce resources, there have been marketplaces.
When the human race was concentrated around clusters of communities, those marketplaces were physical, with the market represented by a physical space, and prices were naturally regulated by proximity — if I sold fruit amongst five other fruit sellers, there was a natural commercial pressure to provide a minimum level of quality and a competitive price. As global markets have grown, they have become more complex, with buyers and sellers finding it difficult to find each other, never mind competitively setting prices or conform to any idea of minimum quality. Brokers have been one of the solutions that have arisen to this market dislocation. These brokers knew what buyers wanted and what sellers could produce and earned a margin for matching the two. risk and ideas, but just millions rather than billions. This is a dangerous idea not just to the likes of Google and Facebook, but to any intermediary like banks — in fact any individual or business that leverages the hard work of others without making a valuable contribution to the eventual outcome.
Back in October, we said vegetablesWA was working on an app with a Sydneybased start-up, Maven Marketplaces. Last month, we signed a joint venture under which we will be launching a mobile app called vegetablesdirect.
Key messages
• Technology has made marketplaces more accessible • Technology has enabled this accessibility • vegetablesdirect is such a technology. Then came the internet. From book publishing to advertising, the internet empowered individuals through platforms which enabled buyers and sellers to easily find each other again. That did not remove the need for Our vision for the app is to make brokers entirely, but certainly it no growers more visible to buyers longer costs 40 per cent to remit money from Dubai to Dhaka. That is because the internet does not solve everything. There is still a role for a broker across the globe — a marketplace with the modern twist that technology can deliver. who helps to build a business A search engine that helps you by uncovering new business to find new suppliers and to a grower who would have never come across the buyer by themselves. However, increasingly that is ‘a’ channel rather than A marketplace with the modern twist that technology can deliver. be found by new buyers. A free channel to advertise distressed product. Artificial intelligence that can predict what the ‘the’ channel. price for apples will be next In the technology world, there has been a realisation that the internet seems to have moved from its initial Wednesday or August next year. And those are just the ideas we have had so far. ‘peer-to-peer’ structure to something We have used a highly-flexible much more monopolistic, where a technology, which means we can quickly few platforms like Google, Facebook implement new features, so we are and Amazon now control most of the hoping you tell us what it is you want user time and resources, with a few the app to do, because the joint venture individuals making billions of dollars means you participate in the upside. from our searches and photos. The users doing all the hard work have been separated from shareholders who have made all the money. MORE INFORMATION We are gradually rolling the app out to As a result, there is an emerging growers so we can iron out the problems iteration of the internet known as Web3, based on the idea that users should be rewarded for their participation with as we go, but if you would like to be an early user, feel free to reach out at help@vegetablesdirect.com.au ownership and, therefore, a share of the financial upside. That is not to say that entrepreneurs should not be fairly rewarded for their
f VEGETABLESWA RDO presenting on weather patterns and crop pest management
In mid-February, part of the vegetablesWA team headed up North to deliver some workshops on COVID-19 business continuity planning, weather information for crop pest management and updates on the AG visa. Over the week, the vegetablesWA team held three workshops in multiple languages in the Geraldton and Carnarvon regions. The team visited a number of growers in the area to give them individual information on issues they might be facing and how best to f COVID-19 business continuity planning materials. manage them.
vegetablesWA trip
vegetablesWA Acting CEO Manus Stockdale said it was excellent to see a positive to Carnarvon Supplying information on issues growers might be facing and how best to manage them. BY BENJAMIN HAMILTON ADMINISTRATION, MARKETING & SALES, uptake of the workshops, particularly those delivered in Vietnamese. VEGETABLESWA vegetablesWA aims to provide relevant and useful information to growers that benefit their businesses. Further, it was excellent to see good engagement with the Human Resources and Industrial Relations (HR/IR) project. The HR/IR project aims to provide growers with one-on-one human resources assistance, which will be paramount as the new AG Visa will require growers to demonstrate that they have suitable HR/IR policies under the approved employer system. “It was fantastic to see good attendance for the three workshops we held in Geraldton and Carnarvon. It’s great to see growers coming to vegetablesWA for information and engaging with the services we provide,” Manus said.
“We provided key information about the Human Resources and Industrial Relations project, and it was excellent to see growers engaging with our consultant Stephen Farrell, as he will be able to assist them with these issues and help them better prepare for the arrival of the AG Visa and other government and supply chain requirements.” vegetablesWA Regional Development Officer Truyen Vo, gave informative presentations about the predicted weather patterns for the coming season, noting that there will be a forecast of excess rainfall from March to May due to the mature La Niña system in the Pacific Ocean. If this forecast comes to fruition, we will see higher minimum and maximum temperatures, which have the potential to increase pests and disease levels in crops. He recommended growers to take the appropriate precautions to manage the increased biosecurity risks. This was the first visit to Carnarvon for Regional Development Officer Michael Bartholomew, which served as an excellent opportunity for him to gain a better understanding of the northern production regions and build networks with growers. Michael will be delivering on the VegNET 3.0 project and has more visits to Carnarvon and Geraldton planned in the future.
Michael said he was keen to have continued engagement with growers in Carnarvon. It was reassuring for him that several growers requested the COVID-19 biosecurity farm signs vegetablesWA has available and that many growers are intending to implement COVID-19 risk management practices onto their farms. “It was positive to see growers take the COVID-19 advice seriously and take the first steps in ensuring they mitigate as
much risk to their businesses as they can. I am looking forward to returning to Carnarvon and following up on the topics we covered in the workshops and better understanding the challenges in the region and how vegetablesWA can assist members,” Michael said. Excess rainfall from March to May forecast due to the mature La Niña system in the PacificOcean. Regional Development Officer, Truyen Vo, will continue the workshop tour in North Perth and southern regions throughout February and March.
MORE INFORMATION
If you have any queries regarding the AG Visa, the COVID-19 business continuity planning, or weather information for crop pest management, do not hesitate to contact vegetablesWA on (08) 9486 7515.
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