Atherton Tablelands biodynamic garlic grower Adam Collins and his partner Gwen Bocci are celebrating their best harvest in two decades. Along with his father John Collins, they grow Australian Certified Organic garlic at Kaban.
The Collins' sell their biodynamic certified garlic at $30/kg, to retailers in Longreach, Townsville and Cooktown, but the majority is sold locally. Collins said the pandemic had made consumers realise the importance of buying locally produced food.
Despite the strong demand for locally produced Australian garlic, the Collins' are not intending to expand but instead are focused on producing a higher quality product.
"We never intended to be particularly big and we didn't want to become slaves to it, we're not just about production, we want our produce to be of the highest quality," he said. "Growing garlic is a lot of physical work and the machinery used in the garlic industry is expensive to buy, because it's specialised and not something you can just buy off the shelf in Australia. For us to expand we would have to get a harvester and to buy a harvester we'd actually have to grow another five to 10 times what we're growing now."
Source: queenslandcountrylife.com.au
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