Despite the significant challenges facing growers over recent years, the vegetable sector continues to show impressive growth and resilience due to the hard work and dedication of its growers who continue to struggle with increasing costs of production and labour shortages, writes Michael Coote*.
The horticulture sector has experienced strong growth over the last ten years, with the latest data from the Horticulture Statistics Handbook (Hort Stats) indicating a growth in value of $6.15 billion since 2012/13 to $15.62 billion 2022/23.
Vegetable growers have been a strong driver for this growth, with the vegetable sector now the largest in value in Australian horticulture at over $5.5 billion of the $15.62 billion total, which includes fruit, nuts and greenlife.
Key insights from the latest Hort Stats handbook include:
While the long-term growth in the vegetable industry has been impressive, the industry continues to struggle with weather events, higher production costs and labour shortages, all which have impacted production volumes of many vegetables.
High production costs and challenges in sourcing labour have also significantly impacted growers' bottom lines. So while the overall production value of many lines is higher than previous years, the profitability of many growers is lower as these increases have not been enough to meet increases in costs.
It is also important to put this data into perspective, with much of the publicised shortages and supply issues with many vegetable lines occurring late in the data period or in the subsequent financial year.
That being said, when looking at the longer-term growth of the sector, both production volumes and production values have grown strongly, which is a great sign for the ongoing viability of the vegetable industry and for Australian horticulture more generally.
Input costs, supply chain disruptions, imbalance in retailer relationships, workforce challenges, compliance pressures, declining vegetable consumption and rising interest rates are all impacting growers in Australia.
Many of these issues are global problems. The long-term economic sustainability of the fresh produce sector is being challenged, which threatens food security and health across the nation.
To address this, AUSVEG has joined the Global Coalition of Fresh Produce, together with the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Europe, South America and Africa, to maximise opportunities for growers through combined lobbying, collaboration, and shared learnings.
We often feel that the problems we face in Australia are unique, but the concerns of the Coalition members are the same as ours.
Growers around the globe are feeling squeezed by retailers, overburdened with compliance, struggling with increasing input costs and battling workforce shortages.
Chronic disease through poor diet is fast becoming a global phenomenon and yet successive governments here and overseas continue to ignore the issue.
It is concerning to think that life expectancy in Australia is predicted to decline due to poor dietary habits, particularly when we can act and reverse the trend.
Through the Coalition we hope to further raise the profile of this issue, and other key industry challenges, on a global scale through advocacy to key organisations such as WHO and FAO.
Given the challenges that we are continuing to face, I encourage all in the sector to continue to support growers in the production of high-quality fresh produce.
*Michael Coote is the CEO of AUSVEG, the peak industry body for vegetable and potato growers. Mr Coote has worked with AUSVEG since 2014, previously leading the organisation’s trade and export development division.
