What a wonderful, eye opening, colourful, crazy, and grounding nine days at the Ekka. Touted as the event where city meets country, it was also the event where growers met consumers, politicians met anyone and everyone they could, and we met tens of thousands of advocates of fresh produce.

Two years ago, the Queensland fresh produce sector and supply chain came together with an active and collaborative mindset. The result was Future Fields, the strategic vision for where the industry wanted to be in 10 years.

After spending the past couple of weeks in North and Far North Queensland listening to growers, we heard the issues loud and clear. Fair margins were rightfully at the top of the list, as were workforce issues including the new deed and guidelines with the PALM scheme, however the main theme we heard was around compliance burden and auditors.

I know we are all busy and there’s always a million things to prioritise but if you’re a Sunwater allocation holder, or would like to be one in the future, I would urge you to prioritise understanding the current consultation occurring across Queensland before it’s too late to have your say.

Last week I was asked to be on a panel to discuss what the G in ESG means to the horticultural sector.

The Regional Migration Forum held last week in beautiful Bowen was another amazing example of North Queensland kicking goals and not just the ‘Cowboys’ kind.

I was incredibly humbled to represent Queensland fruit, vegetable, and nuts growers recently at the Food Security Parliamentary Inquiry Committee. I know there would have been many growers who would have loved to be there to tell their own story. We were given five minutes to tell the story of all horticulture in Queensland – not an easy ask. Here’s the gist of what we said.

The world’s first macadamia marketer; food security in remote communities; a sit down with farmer and author of The Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe; and the work of science in native food and Indigenous agribusinesses are just some of the stories we shared during NAIDOC Week as we continued to celebrate the Year of Horticulture.

The recent Hort Connections Conference held in Adelaide this year was a cracking event with a big thumbs up to both the organisers and sponsors.

Last week’s State Budget, while heavily focused on measures to alleviate cost of living pressures, also delivered investment in biosecurity, drought preparedness, water and energy infrastructure and planning.

Last week over 3,000 people in the national horticultural supply chain came together in Adelaide to celebrate, educate, collaborate, innovate, and advocate for an industry which supports umpteen hundreds of thousands of jobs across the nation. I say umpteen as unfortunately no one really knows how many jobs indirectly rely on horticulture, a noticeable lack of data which really inhibits our advocacy efforts.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been fortunate enough to visit two major horticultural regions – connecting with our members and hearing first-hand the issues affecting them.

The Queensland Government’s Department of Environment and Science has completed their review of flying-fox management regulations for crop protection and have decided to stick to their election commitment to repeal flying-fox management regulations and return to a modern framework of protection.

May is Domestic Violence Prevention Month. This presents an opportunity to start a conversation, a chance to review and revisit internal policies and procedures, as well as an opportunity to invest in DV Alert or Psychological first aid training for staff.

We were repeatedly told not to expect anything for horticulture in this budget, so we readied ourselves for no good news. What we didn’t brace for was the sneaky way the government would go about funding biosecurity.

For anyone who doesn’t yet understand the value of being a member of an advocacy body such as ours, here is but one example as to its value.

Recently, we had to describe horticulture in brief. This is tricky when representing 104 commodities, so we went back to basics. Horticulture is the branch of plant agriculture dealing with garden crops, generally fruits, vegetables, nuts, flowers, turf, and ornamental plants.

The horticulture industry in Queensland is not only made up of a diverse array of commodities but has a number of regional grower groups who each strongly represent their own agendas to further the industry’s progress.  

Christmas eve last year I had a grower call me about a request to supply product during the Christmas period which would have seen them lose a great deal of money as picking, packing, and transporting costs would have all been incurred with public holiday rates.

When we self-proclaimed this year as “The Year of Horticulture” we hoped we would be able to effectively celebrate the work our growers do, educate consumers and advocate to decision makers. We also hoped we could bring some fun and positivity into our industry, an industry which needs to shake off an image problem.