Buy our better berries

The fruit would be there if supermarkets were willing to pay farmers a sustainable price, they say.

In the wake of Australians contracting hepatitis A after consuming frozen berries grown in Chile and China and packaged in Chinese factories, claims by processors importing the produce that they cannot source the ingredients they need in Australia have surfaced.

But NSW growers say they would love the opportunity to supply processors of frozen berries and grow their operation, however, prices on offer went nowhere near meeting their costs of production.

Blueberry and raspberry production in Australia has grown at phenomenal rates in the past five to 10 years and the vast majority is sold as fresh fruit, with some exported.

Raspberries and Blackberries Aus- tralia Industry development manager Jonathan Eccles said Australian berry growers had much higher costs than those in China and Chile.

"The quality is most certainly there, and the quantity could be too if the pricing signals were coming from the big companies," he said.

The value of the NSW blueberry crop had lifted four-fold in the past six years to be more than $100 million and raspberries had gone from less than 500 tonne a year in 2004 to in more than of 3000t last year.

Victoria was still the largest producer but NSW was not far behind, Mr Eccles said.

Low-chill varieties and varieties that fruit year-round had prompted the production shift north, and fuelled already booming consumer demand, he said.

Otto and Lynette Saeck, who have 100,000 blueberry trees under production at "Blueberry Fields", Brooklet, near Lismore, said processors, in their attempt to meet supermarket demands, were not willing to pay what it cost to source Australian berries.

"Supermarkets love to say they prefer to buy Australian produce but they never finish the sentence - 'at the same price as we can buy foreign produce'," Mr Saeck said.

"Blueberry Fields" aims to produce up to 300t of fresh fruit a year, harvesting throughout winter and into early summer, with most sent to the Sydney wholesale markets and some to local farmers' markets.

All is picked by hand as machine-harvesting can bruise skins and shorten shelf life, Mr Saeck said.

"In Chile, labour costs $5 a day, here it is up to $30 an hour," he said.

"Our netting comes at $85,000 a hectare, we've spent millions of dollars on irrigation and we also farm in a way that is environmentally sustainable and that means built-in costs that our overseas competitors don't have.

"Australia produces arguably the best quality berries in the world."

Mr Eccles said initial concerns about the hepatitis incident turning consumers away from berries did not appear to be eventuating.

"In fact, it seems consumers are becoming more mindful about sourcing Australian berries," he said.

"The reality is, you can now buy fresh berries year-round in Australia."