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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-06-04 Daily Xml
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Vegetable Industry

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (14:54): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Lee is interjecting. He is on two warnings. He has had a fair crack today. He can leave for the rest of question time.

The honourable member for Lee having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. S.S. Marshall interjecting:

The SPEAKER: And the Premier is warned.

Mr CREGAN: My question is to the Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development. Can the minister update the house on the achievements of the South Australian vegetable industry?

The Hon. T.J. WHETSTONE (Chaffey—Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development) (14:55): I thank the member for Kavel for his very important question, and I can. I know that he supports a number of his growers, not only the Barker Boy processors, but he also has the Samwell and Cranwell families who grow the majority of the state's brussels sprouts, kale and spinach—all those healthy green vegetable products.

Last month, they were part of an audience when I attended the 2019 AUSVEG SA Awards. Those awards recognise some of the outstanding achievements by our food producers and aspiring exporters. We saw 250 growers and industry members present, and it was an outstanding celebration of the industry—about a $700 million vegetable industry—here in South Australia, highlighting how important it is supplying not only fresh produce domestically but they are also now starting to break into export markets, which is not only important for our trade but it is important that they now grow their businesses to the next level, and we are a government working with AUSVEG SA to give them that capacity.

Some of the winners on the night were Mark Pye from Zerella Fresh. Mark is an outstanding broadacre horticulturalist. He has a number of operations nationally, and he is recognised in the Mallee at Parilla for his outstanding work producing not only some of the global-leading potato products but also carrots and of course his onion line. He is an outstanding grower and ambassador for the industry by and large.

Daniel Hoffman is the Young Grower of the Year. I was speaking with Daniel on the phone only this morning, looking at ways we can put better traceability into our fresh produce, not only into our domestic markets but also into our international markets, so that they can trace from paddock to plate and understand who has been growing those products, what pesticides they use and what types of processes that fresh produce have been through.

Another winner was Jason Clark from Symons Clark Logistics, another great recognition of logistics and the important role that they play in transporting from farm to markets, to port and to airports making sure that those products arrive safe, fresh and undamaged.

Bianca Marrone from Marrone Fresh won the Women in Horticulture Award, and I had a conversation with her. She is a single mother of three managing a large fresh produce business on the Adelaide Plains. Hers is an outstanding success story and I congratulate her. Barbara Hall from SARDI was awarded the Researcher of the Year. Barbara has dedicated her life to research at SARDI and has done an outstanding job. Sadly, she is about to retire, but she is leaving her role in good, young hands at SARDI, and we know the important work that SARDI undertakes.

Peter Petsios from SA Tomato Company won the Biosecurity Award, a very important award, using integrated pest management techniques—that is, beneficial insects instead of using chemicals on his products—and that recognition was through a lot of hard work and dedication. I know that he works with a number of those suppliers of the beneficial insects. It was just a great recognition of his work and dedication.

I also want to acknowledge the government's Clean Your Farm project. That project has been an outstanding success. It's an educational program making sure that the mentoring scheme works in our vegetable industry, making sure that they clean up around their growing areas and making sure that we are recognised as growing clean, green, fresh produce.

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