Food fight: Barriers to cheap & healthy produce are bigger than your pay packet

Meanwhile, farmers have told a NSW Parliamentary inquiry they are crying out for an overhaul of retail competition rules, and a better planning system to get their goods from paddock to mouth quicker.

NSW Farmers reps told the Fresh Food Pricing hearing in Sydney they could support a voluntary code of conduct that the likes of Woolworths and Coles would sign up to, to prove they have producers and consumers at the front of their minds.

“Not requirements, but voluntary mandates for the likes of Coles and Woolies, who love to put a farmer on their advertising and smelling the tomato and the orange and say how great they are for farmers and regional communities,” said the Association’s chief economist Ash Salardini.

“If that’s the case, here’s a set of principles you need to abide by.

“It could be around fairness, ethical treatment of your own supply chain, and getting them to sign up to it and keeping them accountable.”

Retail pricing was just one spoke examined on the rusted, bent wheel of fresh food availability and affordability in NSW.

Crucially, action has been demanded to address the shocking reality of food insecurity impacting indigenous people and people in the regions more than others.

The Upper House committee, chaired by the Reverend Fred Nile and featuring members across all parties, heard on Friday at least 1 in 12 Australian families don’t have enough food, or can’t afford to buy food once a week.

For many, fresh food is just too expensive or too far away.

According to the NSW Council of Social Services, 7 per cent of Australian families is food insecure.

“It is important to concentrate efforts on lowering the price of fresh food in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas,” the council said.  

“Healthy living and food is often precluded from (these people) - particularly in regional and remote communities. And particularly in Western NSW,”

The hearing heard some parents are so ashamed of their kids’ malnutrition, they keep them at home so teachers and others don’t see them.

For others, particularly in the regions, entrenched disadvantage has cemented a number of unhealthy habits and obesity-related diseases.

This is due in some part to an absence of proper food education, and ‘food deserts’.

“There are food deserts in Western Sydney where it’s very hard to access healthy food, particularly when transport is an issue,” NCOSS said. 

“At the same time, many families are not thinking about healthy food, but about how the can feed their families on a very limited budget.”

The Council’s submission said the influence of junk food advertising and sponsorship also played a role.

“In areas with higher levels of disadvantage, both primary and secondary schools are more likely to be in closer proximity to fast food restaurants”.

The council wants state government to eliminate unhealthy marketing in spaces it owns or leases and take action to remove unhealthy food marketing, promotion and sponsorship of all children’s sport.

It has also called for an additional $39m investment in childhood obesity prevention with a focus on equitable access and opportunities in regional and remote NSW.

Farmers - the people growing and sending the product to market - say fresh food impediments present on a scale from the Great Dividing Range, to residential developments, irrigator laws, and the conduct of big retailers.

NSW Farmers’ chief economist Ash Salardini said the geographical slide west of NSW agriculture, away from the Sydney basin and other coastal areas due to residential creep, was adding huge transport costs.

This in turn is making food less accessible for consumers, he said.

“Highly perishable foods don’t have a long perishability, so the quicker you can get it to the consumer benefits the ease of use and the affordability,” he told the inquiry.

“I don’t know about you guys but of the food in my fridge 20-30 per cent rots and I throw it away.

“That’s because before it has got to me, it has sat for a week, maybe two weeks in the supply chain.

“So (helping farmers get food to market quicker) creates an opportunity to make food more affordable - not through price - but through use.”

Historically, locally-grown produce was picked, packed and distributed at local distribution centres throughout regional areas, the Association said in its submission.

“Increasingly however, produce is picked locally and sent to more centralised packing and/or distribution centres, often located long distances from the place it was grown.”

These ‘value added’ products are then shipped back to the regional areas where they were grown and sold at a price well above what was paid to the farmer.

The Association said, therefore, value adding must be done regionally if it is to better benefit the regions. 

“To support this shift governments must invest in the infrastructure which enables regional communities to thrive – be it road and rail infrastructure through to investments in social infrastructure, tackling rural crime and ensuring the liveability and attractiveness of our regional centres.”

“There are efficiencies to be gained from co-located packing and distribution facilities, however they must be connected to efficient and reliable produce transport.”

Mr Salardini said the inability to use productive vehicles from East to West in NSW was a huge problem.

“None of the major routes over the great dividing range have been optimised for freight,” Mr Salardini said.  

“And the Central West is incredibly productive, so it is a huge impediment.

“Would you expect we’d have a mining industry if the road into the Pilbara was a one-lane highway weaving through a hill? No, you wouldn’t.

“But that is what agriculture has to contend with.”

He said the goal for government should be to free up transport networks enough to link the Central West and Parramatta for freight in under three hours.

But planning for any Outer Sydney Orbital Corridor must consider potential land use conflicts, and the impact of land values surpassing production value. 

Peri-urban conflict between expanding housing and farm land also looms large, particularly in the Sydney Basin, and on the North Coast, where a significant amount of perishable goods are produced. 

The Association’s submission to the inquiry also touched on policy settings for things like native vegetation and irrigaion that farmers must contend with in order to to produce quality food as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“It is not just about the cost of transport of product to the market, but how you get the ingredients or precursors for the production,” Mr Salardini said.  

Pressure from urban expansion, environmental restrictions and conflict between agriculture and the extractive industries has led to serious declines in the amount of land in productive use across the state.

“Strategic planning in New South Wales must consider the scarcity of good soil and reliable water on the Australian continent,” the Association’s submission read.

“Many Australians are not aware of this rarity, and this is evidenced by a planning system that has allowed low density housing, extractive industries and poorly planned environmental restrictions to permanently alienate some of our most productive land”.

The National Irrigators’ Council said with irrigated agricultural production, the state would be importing the vast majority of the food that appears in its markets and supermarkets.

The council said, by value, 80 per cent of NSWs vegetables came from irrigated production, 76pc of fruit and nuts, 90pc of grapes, 55pc of dairy production, 100pc of rice, as well as a significant proportion of other grains.

“It would be fair to say that without NSW Irrigators most of the fruit and vegetables Sydney residents buy would be much more expensive, probably many days older (having been imported) or in a tin,” the council said.