The number of vegetable farms in Australia has dropped by more than a third in the past decade as farmers face urban encroachment and tighter margins.
The first chapter of a report on vegetable farm finances by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics and Sciences shows that, across the nation between 2006-07 and 2015-16, the number of vegetable growing farms dropped by 37 per cent.
Most of this decline was in Queensland, NSW and Victoria and was “largely a result of a decline in the number of small vegetable-growing farms planting less than 20 hectares.”
Abares senior economist Dale Ashton said the decline in smaller farms was partly due to urban encroachment on farming land.
“It’s mostly in the greater Melbourne and Sydney areas,” Mr Ashton said.
“While the number of farms has remained steady in Ballarat and Gippsland during the past five years it had declined in Melbourne’s west and southeast.”
Victorian Farmers’ Markets Association vice-president Chris Chapple said small farms were unable to compete financially with corporations and imports.
“Losing small farmers from the industry negatively impacts regional communities,” he said.
Victorian Farmers Federation horticulture group president Emma Germano said typically bigger farms had better succession planning “so there is often another generation coming through because there is a more viable business there already.”
“A lot of these smaller growers that don’t continue, they don’t have enough to pass onto another generation for it to be financially sustainable and viable,” she said.
Ms Germano said it was difficult for small farms to be competitive unless they had a direct to market model and a lot of growers found themselves “under the cost of production” as the price of vegetables had not increased much in the past decade.
The report shows while the weighted index of farm prices for Australia’s main vegetables rose in 2015-16, it is expected to fall 2 per cent in 2016-17.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, released last week, show vegetable prices dropped 10.9 per cent for the June to September quarter.
AusVeg chief executive officer James Whiteside said that while yields were down across Australia, the drops and subsequent price increases were geographically isolated and short-lived. He said pricing was a challenge.
“We’ve seen relatively stable prices over the decade but growers’ cost base is up,” Mr Whiteside said.
He said vegetable prices should move at least with the consumer price index.
The full Abares report will be released this month.
Source: weeklytimesnow.com.au
