Hortex Alliance

Mrs VLAHOS (Taylor) (16:01): I would like to speak today about the second priority the Premier spoke about during his recent CEDA address on the 10 priorities of South Australia moving forward, which is premium food and wine produced in our clean environment and exported to the world. I would particularly like to talk about the Hortex alliance, which is a group of people in my electorate, but firstly for the record let's talk about what the South Australian horticulture industry does.

Recently, the PIRSA food scorecard for 2012-13, which was released in November 2013 for the horticulture industry in South Australia, showed the finished food value was $1.134 billion. This is the finished food value or value of goods that was completed via the manufacturing process but had not been sold or distributed yet to the end user. The farm-gate value was estimated to be $677 million and overseas exports was $139 million. The net interstate trade was $515 million. The retail and services sales was $1.951 billion, with a gross food revenue of $2.605 billion for our state.

Hortex in the northern Adelaide Plains plays an important role in the story in the electorate of Taylor. Hortex is a not-for-profit alliance with a mission to support and promote sustainable production systems in South Australia. It was formed in 2009 to explore networks and access resources for building capacity within the horticulture industry within the northern Adelaide Plains area. I am glad to be working side by side with them and we move towards achieving some of the priorities the Premier spoke about in his speech.

Its chairman, a long-time farmer in the Virginia area and Playford councillor, is Dino Musolino, who does a fine job alongside his deputy chairman, Zurriyet Braham, and the executive officer, Bryan Robertson. Together, the board membership represents almost a combined total of 200 years of industry experience. We have a range of people in the area of Virginia—growers, a good mix of gender and ages, we also have agronomists, business owners, organic producers—who are all fantastic people to work with side by side to make sure we achieve some of the projects we have set our hearts on.

Some of the things Hortex is doing in the local area are helping local farmers and producers with building code reform, something I am working with them on a round table to ensure that we resolve issues that will unlock millions of dollars of investment in our state and create jobs. We are working to increase food production yields. Many families involved in horticulture wanted to continue in the industry but wanted to downsize their operations.

Hortex is involved in discussions with the community about technologies and techniques to give greater crop yields on smaller parcels of land. We are working together to figure out how water table preservation and flood mitigation can be used to help us. Farmers are working with Hortex about projects that will capture rainwater run-off, store it in purpose-built storage and pump the water through the aquifer. This type of water storage will help mitigate flooding, and for the west of Port Wakefield Road particularly this is an issue, and help boost the local groundwater resources. This technology is being used in Israel and involves an innovative solution for a dry climate. It takes advantage of utilising natural infrastructure underground, rather than building new networks above ground.

We are also interested in working together with the government for export pilot programs. Many horticulturalists in the north are eager to take the next steps with their businesses and start exporting, but they need assistance in finding new markets. Together with the Department of State Development (DSD), we are going to investigate this further. The alliance is planning on creating pilot programs that will engage with our overseas neighbours, such as Singapore and Hong Kong, to create new export markets for our local farmers.

I am pleased to be working alongside Hortex and the growers of my area. I know how much they provide in employment, how hard they work, and how proud of them we are in the northern plains of Adelaide.