The Coalition Government is backing fairer prices for horticulture growers through funding totalling $1.75 million to improve market transparency and bargaining power for the industry.
Minister for Agriculture and Northern Australia, David Littleproud, said the funding to ABARES and to an industry consortium led by Fresh Markets Australia is a practical example of the Government’s commitment to addressing price transparency in perishable agricultural goods supply chains.
“The more perishable your goods are, the weaker your position at the bargaining table,” Minister Littleproud said.
“Australian horticulture produces some of the finest produce in the world, and it’s essential that our growers get a fair price in the marketplace.
“A grant of $653,950 provided under the Government’s $5.94 million program to improve market transparency across perishable agricultural goods supply chains, will be provided to Fresh Markets Australia to help develop and build of a web-based application that provides trusted, verifiable, daily updated market data across all fresh fruit and vegetables.
“This will mean that growers can access daily market information online about the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables, and the volume of market sales”
“With this investment the data lifecycle from generation to display will be only 24 hours”
Fresh Markets Australia General Manager, Ms Gail Woods, said the project will investigate, develop, pilot and implement FreshData a Verifiable Market Price Reporting scheme.
“FreshData will be accessible online, overlaying historical weather and other data to enable the horticulture supply chain to gauge whether prices received are competitive and to deliver price signals to interpret if there is an under or over supply of produce,” Ms Woods said.
“The project aims to provide growers with information to inform investments in future supply capacity.”
ABARES will conduct a representative survey of apple and pear growers to gain a detailed picture of farm performance with results from the survey to be published on the ABARES website. The study will be undertaken using $1 million from existing funding of the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.
For more information:
nationals.org.au