According to new data from a NSW Farmers Association survey, retail fruit prices have barely changed in two decades, which caused producers to be forced out of the industry. The number of orchardists in what were once the apple-growing heartlands of Australia has plummeted since 2000, with population of growers halved, according to the data.
The number of apple farmers in the Orange region of New South Wales town has fallen from more than 200 to a dozen, while near Harcourt in Victoria the small community of Elphinstone used to have 23 farming families, but now only a few remain. Producers placed the blame on large supermarkets that had only increased retail prices by 50 cents a kilogram in the past 20 years.
Although apple varieties at major supermarkets are being sold at between $4 to 7 a kilo, and retail data shows that 84 per cent of Australian households regularly buy the crunchy fruit, growers aren’t really involved here.
"We are probably making somewhere around $2.50 to $2.70 per kilo. The rest is the retail margin," one of them said. "If it costs us $2.50 to grow the fruit and we are selling them at $3.00, we get a 50-cent margin for 18 months of work. The public sees the price go up and wrongly assumes the growers are getting more money, but the money isn't flowing through to the growers."
Source: abc.net.au