Tessa posted a very interesting article over at the forum this morning about SPC Ardmona petitioning the Australian Productivity Commission to place tariffs on imported tinned tomatoes and fruits. They need the next 200 days so they can regroup and have a breather. My heart breaks when I see orange trees being burnt down and grape vines left to rot. When I grew up, many homes grew their own fruit. Now this doesn't happen so much and up until now, we've brought fresh and tinned Australian fruits and tomatoes. Now they're hard to find, you have to check every label before you put it in your trolley and I'm sick of it. Our politicians should know how important it is for us to eat our locally grown fruit and vegetables, if they don't know, please tell them.
I've just started a petition at change.org to support SPC Ardmona in their petition, in the hope it will give them the breathing space they need to reorganise and for us, the Australian shoppers, to get them back into profit again. If you're an Australian, please help, they need your voice and your signature.
UPDATED: I wrote to SPC Ardmona telling them of our support for them and our fruit farmers and just received this reply. Thanks to everyone who have signed the petition so far. I'm sure you join me in sending the best to the SPC Ardmona workers, and to the farmers who supply the fruit they process.
Dear Rhonda,
Thank you for getting in touch with us about your endorsement of our ‘Australian Grown and Made’ efforts.
You are absolutely right, we must continue to eat local food! So it’s always good to hear from our consumers (and influential bloggers) that we are on the right track with the products we are producing and the way we are marketing them.
SPC Ardmona is doing everything possible to ensure we make Australian made and grown products. Our policy and practice is to ensure that all our peaches, pears, apricots, plums, baked beans and tomatoes are 100% Australian grown and made.
We are going out of our way to make this happen. Aside from our fruit products, our SPC “Aussie Made” Baked Beans have seen us double our Navy Bean intake from Australia to make them 100% Australian grown and made (despite incurring a significant cost premium to do so).
We believe it is the right thing to do by Australian consumers and Australian growers.
Our focus is firmly on supporting our Australian farmers and industry and the endorsement and support of our consumers is what will see us succeed in these endeavours. It’s times like this that the combined voice, strength and actions of the community become more important than ever. The message to consumers is clear; buy Australian sourced, made and produced products wherever you can. You can make the difference.
I have shared your email with our employees who I know will appreciate the support.
Please keep up the great work in spreading our message far and wide.
Peter Kelly
Managing Director
SPC Ardmona
Do we mean "tariffs on imported tomatoes and fruits"? Is what we're asking for that the imports are more expensive for a while? I'm VERY happy to support our homegrown industries but I'm not sure from the wording.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that Carole. I worded that badly. I've corrected it now.
DeleteJust signed the petition Rhonda :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing this to my attention. I often shop by price only, but will make more of a concerted effort to read the labels so I know where my food is grown. This tarrif would put Australian farmers on an equal footing.
ReplyDeleteGood Morning Rhonda,
ReplyDeletethanks for the petition, all signed and passing it onto friends. Love the new photo :)
Have a wonderful day, Madeleine
I'm going over to sign up now, Rhonda. I will spread the word too. I hate seeing our Australian oranges trees etc. being cut down. It is just ridiculous and I can't understand why it is allowed. Thanks for letting us know what is happening.
ReplyDeleteI try to buy Australian canned fruits and vegetables as I lived in the Riverina a couple of decades ago and thought there was a bushfire but it was hundreds of acres of orange and apple trees that had been bulldozed being burnt as the farmers couldn't make an income from it anymore. It made me cry then and it still makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteWish I could help somehow from NYC :(
ReplyDeleteBest wishes,
Sandra
Hi Sandra, it's wonderful knowing that our international friends are supporting this in spirit.
DeleteI've signed as well :-)
ReplyDeleteIt is a disgrace that our government has not stepped in sooner to protect our growers and farmers. I will most definitely be signing. Thank you for arranging the petition.
ReplyDeleteHi Rhonda,
ReplyDeleteI can't find the petition? What is the actual name of it as I would love to help support this important issue.
Cheers
Jan
www.agluttonouswife.blogspot.com.au
p.s hope Hanno is all better after your TLC and love the new pic :)
Jan, the link is in the post above. Click where it says to click and it will take you to the petition.
DeleteSorry, bit of a blonde moment there Ronda :) Signed
DeleteThank you for organising this petition, Rhonda.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a lovely area that used to be densely populated with apple orchards - they are few and far between now. I cried the day the 35 acre orchard was pulled out next door. Our neighbour told us it cost him $1.40 per kilo to grow the apples - and he could only sell them for 30 cents per kilo. When you have a family to support, you are literally backed into a corner. He (only half jokingly) said to us "plant more fruit trees" - he knew things were going bad, fast.
Thank you for this Rhonda, it makes so many of us angry but it is often hard to know what to do apart from making supportive shopping decisions.
ReplyDeleteWe have exactly the same problem here in the UK. Most of the time, we can't even find fruit grown in the UK, except strawberries this time of year. Hundreds of acres of orchards have been dug up in recent decades, only a few now operate, and most of the time, they have to leave their fruit on the tree/vine as the supermarkets are too picky. We have no growers/greengrocers near us that sell local fruit and vegetables,so have to buy it from the supermarkets, where we do endeavour to buy local. I went once to a nearby local farm shop only to find their thrown away vegetable sacks with very few UK stamps on them! A nightmare, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteOh Dc, that is shocking. What is the world coming to? We vote our governments in because we hope they will do the right thing by their country, but it seems that money and big business over rides what the general population want...
DeleteSigned. It's getting so hard to buy Australian made, shameful really when we grow such beautiful produce. The last time I looked at f&v veg in Woolworths they had asparagus grown in Peru. Plain ridiculous. Kathryn, who has no idea how to put a user name on here so that I don't keep commenting as 'Anonymous'.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the pressure - we have some problems like this in the US and it makes shopping (which I hate) take longer but I really don't want to buy things from countries that don't have the same standards as we do. Think China - I was appalled at how hard it was to find! good luck with this!
ReplyDeleteI recently noticed that kids' apple juice boxes are from concentrate made in China. Crazy. Even stuff that says "made in the USA" is often produced using ingredients from other countries. This goes back to a topic discussed last week, but much of the organic produce available at the supermarket/green grocer where I live is from Mexico or Chile, even when it's actually in season here!
Delete-Jaime
It drives me crazy trying to buy Australian products. I watched a segment on TV about how Dick Smith has been given six more months to have his 'Ozesauce' on the shelves of two of our biggest supermarkets, and was asking for support to keep his product alive. I went to five supermarkets before I found his product....way up high on the shelf and not visible at all as the bottles were at the back. I literally climbed up the wire shelves to get to the product, (and subsequently got into trouble from one of the staff members). While my husband and I still have the financial capacity to make a choice, I want to support Australian producers and growers, but it's just so hard most of the time. Bit of a rant!
ReplyDeleteFran, I also climb all over the shelves to find genuine Aussie products. So far nobody has confronted me about it, but if they did I would give them such a serve! Not that it would do much good, it's not the fault of the staff at supermarkets, but I just wish I could kick the ---- of the buyers at the top of the retail chains. Choice is doing a great job of bringing them down.
DeleteThanks for sharing this Rhonda!
ReplyDeleteI have signed the petition and shared on my Facebook.
I'm an Australian currently overseas in Austria at the moment, so it's good to keep in touch with home here until I get home in December. Absolutely devastating! There needs to be some sort of tarrif on imported goods so Australian farmers can compete with a society that tends to shop 'lowest price only'.
Hope you're well,
Rebecca H.
I'm not sure me signing it would do any good since I live in United States. But we here in United States need to look in there tariff issues also.
ReplyDeleteCoffee is on
I have read, and signed this petition. I will not buy foreign fruits or vegetables.
ReplyDeleteOur government must stop supporting imports, and we should only be buying Australian, to support our farmers.
If a label has a foreign country on it, I won't buy it. I would rather pay more to keep our own farmers in work...our produce is better, tastier and fresher...farmers markets are a great way to support local farmers and reduce food miles.
Thanks Rhonda, I've just signed the petition. If we don't support our Australian farmers, our choices will be reduced to substandard this or substandard that. I'd prefer Australian grown and produced any day.
ReplyDeleteMichelle
`Hi Rhonda, I too signed the petition and applaud you for taking this stand . For many years now I have been checking labels on everything I buy consequently it takes twice as long to do my shopping ! But I don't care how long it takes me, I know that if everyone did the same it would make a difference. We do try and grow some vegies and at the moment are harvesting Chinese cabbage, bokchoy, some small ordinary cabbage (name escapes me) leeks, spring onion, parsley lettuce, and of course herbs. Our garlic is up about 6 inches and looking good . I grow enough for the year and to give some to my daughters in Melbourne. After reading the letter from SPC I'm going to swop to their beans instead of Heinz . This year we are hoping for a bumper harvest of soft fruits ,in fact I will have too give some plants away (Blackcurrants and Redcurrants) in particular as the cuttings have all taken . I still have about 5kgs Blackcurrants in the freezer .
ReplyDeleteThis post leaves so much unsaid, unfortunately I haven't registered for the forums so I couldn't click through to read. In the above it is assumed that it's important for us all to buy Australia-grown, but you never once mention why.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I'm sure it's nice for Australian farmers to be able to charge higher for their produce, it's not always nice for the people whose grocery costs increase because of tariffs on food. Nor is it nice for the farmers in other countries who, despite not being Australian, probably also work hard, but now find it more difficult to export due to tariff barriers.
I'm all for supporting local food in some circumstances, but I can do that without demanding others pay higher prices.
Hi Rhonda I will definiately be signing the petition. Just an example of how imports can hurt farmers, we were farming, sheep, cattle, pigs, and growing grain and hay for all. Then a certain Prime Minister in the early 1990's allowed more Danish and also Canadian pork into the country, this act helped us to loose our farm, as although we always grew premium grade baconner pigs we could not compete with the lower priced imports. In hiondsight, we sould have sold all our pigs the day the Canandian pork arrived in Aust. It was not only us who suffered, but thousands of pig Farmers. Now a days there a re very few farmers growing pigs, in Aust, compared to 25 years ago.. When people buy ham for instance always buy Aust , esp ham on the bone, as all imported pork is mean't to be bone free.
ReplyDeleteCheers