Pineapple farmer forced out
Sat 27 May 2006
Holly Barrell, Journalism
A top Queensland pineapple farmer for over 30 years, Jim McKenzie has been forced from the pineapple growing industry following plunges in demand and high production costs.
Until recently Jim McKenzie was a successful Golden Circle pineapple grower contributing about 450 tonnes of pineapples annually since the 1970s.
Mr McKenzie from Dayboro in Queensland started growing pineapples in 1973 following in the footsteps of his father.
“Farming is in my blood, I always wanted to be a farmer,” he said.
“When I started there would have been 30 odd growers in the area, now there’s three left and they want to get out too.”
Mr McKenzie blames the abolition of tariffs on fruit imported from overseas and the cheap cost of overseas labour for the drop in demand.
Currently Australia has no tariffs on overseas fruit imports. Tariffs on imports previously forced the price up, allowing Australian growers to compete with cheap labour from countries such as the Philippines.
“Production costs are too high. We cannot compete with overseas labour, it’s just too cheap. The profits were barely worth the effort,” Mr McKenzie said.
Although his involvement in the pineapple industry has stopped the expenses haven’t, forcing him and his wife, Jenny to sell off sections of their 150 acres that once belonged to Mr McKenzie’s great-great-grandfather dating back to 1860.
“We don’t really want to sell any of it. I don’t want to let it go, but economically it’s the best thing to do,” he said.
After learning the tricks of pineapple growing from his father, Mr McKenzie once had dreams of passing his farm and his knowledge on to his own son, Steven.
“My plan was that Steven would take over and I would do some of the easier work like truck driving and tractor work, but that’s fallen by the way side because there’s no money in it,” he said.
Doug Jones from Golden Circle in Brisbane said Golden Circle was temporarily importing pineapples from overseas, but only for food service which was distributed to other manufacturers unlabelled.
One of two reasons Mr Jones gives for Queensland farmers leaving the pineapple industry is that the farmers are an ageing population.
“We have noticed that our growing base is ageing and in a lot of cases we are finding entities were being passed from generation to generation but the younger people are not interested in taking over the family farm anymore,” he said.
The second reason Mr Jones gives is the increasing price of land.
“There is a lot of pressure from urban sprawl and land has become so expensive that instead of growing pineapples [farmers] are selling the land,” he said.
“We struggle in Australia to compete with imports because of their labour rates compared to our labour rates. Tariffs do help to even that playing field,” Mr Jones said.
Golden Circle said it is currently exporting about 10 per cent of Australian pineapple produce overseas.
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