Chris and Diane Robinson are hanging up their hats after more than 25 years growing fresh vegetables in Western Australia’s remote north.
The couple’s semi-retirement means the town of Kununurra has lost its only direct supplier of local vegetables.
The remainder of the town’s produce has been trucked more than 3,000 kilometres from Perth.
The couple were working for the state government’s department of agriculture when they began their horticulture business, Oria Orchards.
“We were doing a full day’s work then racing out to the farm afterwards and spending all our weekends working on it,” Ms Robinson said.
They grew grapefruit and mangoes before branching out into other produce including asparagus, herbs, corn, tomatoes and lettuce.
Most of their produce went down the traditional route to be sold in the Perth markets to the major supermarkets and metro restaurants.
But they quickly found that process was not for them.
“It was just too hard to make any money when we sold to the big supermarkets,” Ms Robinson said.
At the time their neighbours were supplying fresh produce direct to the town of Kununurra, but were getting ready to move solely into banana production.
“We fell into their spot and expanded from there,” Ms Robinson said.
It meant supplying direct to IGA Kununurra, as well as selling their produce at the town’s Saturday morning markets.
“I remember it vividly, I was pregnant with our third child when we started the markets with the fruit, the citrus and just a few zucchinis and tomatoes and that was a two-table stall,” Ms Robinson said.
“It just grew and grew until we needed seven tables.”
Oria Orchards found its niche supplying directly to locals and visitors to the remote northern town.
“The best thing was probably meeting the demand of the people we serve,” Mr Robinson said.
“And we provided a lot of fruit and vegetables to a lot of local restaurants, so to see chefs creating menus out of the stuff we grew was very rewarding.”
No more local veggies
Despite the Robinsons’ success, no business has moved to fill the gap left by Oria Orchards in supplying vegetables direct to Kununurra without first trucking it to Perth.
“I might have put people off by complaining about my sore back too much,” Mr Robinson joked.
“It is very intensive manual labour and most of the work is head down, bum up so it’s hard work but it is very rewarding.”
Curtin University food supply chain systems researcher Liz Jackson said what was happening in Kununurra was a disappointing case study that should be noted by the rest of the country.
“While I wish the Robinsons the best as they move towards retirement, it has brought the issues of food security, carbon footprint and environmental consciousness to the forefront,” Professor Jackson said.
Lengthy trip
Professor Jackson referred to the east Kimberley town as the canary in the coal mine, warning Australia to rethink its relationship with food.
“The problem here is efficiency, as strange as that sounds,” she said.
“Efficiency is what [commercial] supply chains have been working towards for the last 50 years and to do so is to do things by scale.”
She said consumer demand for readily available, cheap produce had led to major supermarkets monopolising the supply chain.
Supermarkets require growers to truck their produce to Perth before returning it to the region’s shelves.
“It’s actually cheaper for those vegetables to be trucked down to Perth and redistributed from there than to have lots of little packing sheds dotted around the country,” Professor Jackson said.
“But where the wheels fall off is when it comes to food security and resilience.”
She pointed to the many recent closures of the Great Northern Highway that connected the Kimberley to the rest of the state.
“These weather events are getting worse and more frequently communities are being cut off, leaving small towns in a very precarious situation [when it comes to supply of fresh produce].”
Still hopeful
Despite the Robinsons semi-retiring, Oria Orchards has continued to grow and sell a range of fruit and flowers in Kununurra.
The couple have not slowed down completely.
“We always have ideas, we are from a research background so we are always finding new things we want to plant,” Mr Robinson said.
They both hoped someone new would fill the veggie supply gap they had left behind.
“It could have been a lot bigger than what we were doing, the market is there so it’s a fairly good opportunity,” Mr Robinson said.
