Conditions kind to stone fruit

Western Australian stone fruit growers have escaped relatively unscathed from the damaging effects of drought this season, with production expected to rebound strongly after a poor 2005-06 season.

The same cannot be said for their counterparts in other states, however, with severe drought and frost episodes threatening to slash harvest forecasts.

Among the worst hit is Victoria’s Goulburn Valley region, which accounts for about a third of the nation’s stone fruit production.

With the region devastated by a severe frost event, eastern states buyers are looking west to buy fruit – a plus for WA growers, who are already facing a decline  in exports of stone fruit due to strong competition and market access problems in Asia.

Roleystone grower and WA Fruit Growers’ Association Summer Fruit Council chairman, Jono Byl, said that while the drought hadn’t affected WA’s stone fruit production, harvest had begun earlier than usual this year, with most varieties coming in 10 to 15 days earlier than normal.

“The side effect of an early harvest is you lose growing time, so the fruit ripens before it has reached full size. So there could be a lot more medium to small sized plums, which is a bit disappointing from a grower’s point of view,” Mr Byl told WA Business News.

Mr Byl said growers were currently seeing reasonable returns for their fruit, but prices for apricots and cherries had fallen, with large amounts of South Australian fruit being imported into WA putting downward pressure on prices.

But despite production increases, the industry could still face a challenge in the export market, which has been declining since reaching record highs in 2000-01.

The value of WA’s plum exports, the main export stone fruit crop, has dropped from $12.7 million in 2000-01 to $2.6 million in 2005-06, due to poor production and strong competition from other Southern Hemisphere suppliers.

The withdrawal of Australia’s main plum export market, Taiwan, in January this year, also had a major impact on exports, with large volumes of stone fruit from eastern Australia re-directed into WA’s main export markets of Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.

“We’re still trying to find other markets to replace the Taiwan market. That’s why we’re quite excited about over east taking a lot of our plums,” Mr Byl said.

Meanwhile, the federal government has announced that regulations for a mandatory code of conduct had been finalised, and will be tabled in parliament in February 2007.

The code comes after years of lobbying by fruit and vegetable grower groups for greater transparency and clarity of transactions between growers and wholesalers and agents.

The code covers all transactions of unprocessed edible horticultural produce, except where it is intended for export or retail sale.

Ausveg chief executive officer John Roach has welcomed the code, calling it a win for growers in regulating good business practice.

But wholesalers have expressed concern that enforcing a mandatory code would be too costly, and that retailers were not required to adhere to the code.

 “Our philosophy has always been one in all in. It doesn’t appear we’ve quite got that, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and we will continue to work towards that outcome,” Mr Roach said.