Sweet potato producers on a rare lense of red soil at Cudgen via Tweed are watching neighbouring land overlaid by concrete on prime farmland.
Land prices have gone sky-high as punts from investors, determined to make good on their land bank deals, cash-in on further development interest in the wake of the new state health precinct.
The latest proposal to build on red soil is for a $250 million private health care and education facility right next to the new Tweed Valley hospital, currently under construction.
Before ground can be broken, the 5.7 hectares of red soil will have to be re-zoned from its current status as State Significant Farmland.
To sweeten the deal, the developers propose to host a farmers' market, and create a koala care research facility.
In their favour is the fact the land in question has not been farmed in 40 years and that the parcel is significantly smaller than the state government's 20ha land threshold.
For generational farmer Jim Paddon, the battle to preserve soil for food was lost when the Tweed Valley hospital was approved for the Cudgen site - despite his family's stringent efforts to make voters aware of the plight.
"That's why we fought so hard against it," he says. "Once we lost our fight we knew it was the beginning of the end This is a major piece of infrastructure. There will be 2000 people a day moving around."
Mr Paddon said land prices soared even further in the wake of the hospital approval, with "land bankers" confident their $1m to $3m punt on a 10ha parcel of farm land a few years ago is now worth $5m. There is no way for a young farmer to carry on the family tradition - unless they have a supportive family.
Mr Paddon's nephew Lachlan Sprout is "super keen" at the moment, currently contracting to grow sweet potatoes on neighbouring farms while prime soil on the Paddon home farm is being future-proofed with compost and biology.
Tweed Nationals MP Geoff Provest never fought against the hospital proposal and in 2018 would not support Labor in trying to move the health precinct to sandy paddocks at nearby Kings Forest. Now, however, he is coming out against further farmland destruction.
In a statement released this week he said: "proponents of a new private development should reconsider their position if they think they will be able to rezone any existing Kingscliff prime agricultural land.
"Whilst we are building a state of the art health facility at Cudgen that should not be seen as a green light to concrete additional Cudgen farmland. This is not welcome. We committed to protect the remaining Cudgen farmland and that is what we are doing."
The Paddon and Sprout family see a bright future in sweet potatoes at Cudgen, in spite of so much change happening all around them.
"We're still going forward with farming," says Mr Paddon but points to the sad loss of other red soil localities north of the border like Redland Bay near Brisbane, which in hindsight should have been zoned for food production not housing.
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