Heavy-handed health warnings are not the key to more organic fruit and vegetables making it onto dinner plates. Neale Gillespie and Andrew Morris tell CASEY NEILL that it’s all about the taste.
“What I do know about is what tastes good, and organic food just tastes better.” – Neale Gillespie
NEALE Gillespie didn’t know a thing about organics when he agreed to help Nangana farmer Andrew Morris with his books.
The duo is now a growing force in the chemical-free vegetable business.
Australian Green Growers is nestled on a Woori Yallock Road property that’s been in Andrew’s family for more than 65 years.
“I’m third generation,” he said.
“My parents farmed organically before the word organic was fashionable.
“They used organic methods before they really knew what they were doing.”
That means the land is chemical-free and easily passed organic certification testing.
“I’m really lucky because to find certified land can be a bit tricky,” Andrew said.
He was about 19 when he decided to try his hand at growing vegies, back in 1990.
“I was fortunate enough to start here. For the first six months I grew organically but wasn’t certified,” he said.
“In 1991 I became certified and it’s gone from there since.”
Andrew said the basic rule for growing organic was ‘it’s got to be natural’.
He relies on chook compost and lime as fertilisers, and rotating plots also helps to create the right foundation for his crops.
“We use green manure plots. We grow oats or dun peas and plough them back into the soil in spring, putting a lot of nutrients back into the soil,” Andrew said.
“We’ve started using pigs as a part of our system. They eat a lot of the weeds and fertilise the soil as well.”
Tiny green leaves sprout from shiny black rows of plastic designed to protect them from insects. Andrew also uses garlic sprays and companion planting to keep the bugs at bay.
“We’ll plant basil next to the tomatoes and the basil prevents a lot of the insects coming onto the tomatoes,” he said.
A salad mix was Andrew’s first product.
“That goes into Queensland, into Sydney, mainly into the wholesale market in Melbourne and from there it can turn up anywhere in the country,” Neale said.
“We ship to Perth via one of the wholesalers.”
They can send out up to 5000 of the 100-gram bags in a busy week and average between 3000 and 4000.
“It’s quieter during winter, but it shifts to more like bunches of kale – which is very popular, it’s a bit of a super food,” Neale said with a smirk.
The 75-acre farm meets most of the demand, but Australian Green Growers has a second property in Girgarre, up Kyabram way.
“We’ve got a guy up there who manages it for us,” Neale said.
“Say a growing season’s six months, because it’s warmer up there we get another six weeks either side.”
Leafy greens remain the pair’s focus, from the lettuce mix to spinach, rocket, silverbeet and rainbow chard.
“But we also do seasonal things, like we’ve got cherry tomatoes in at the moment,” Neale said.
“We grow zucchinis, cucumbers, we have grown capsicums, we grow garlic.
“Beetroot at the moment we’re doing maybe 300 kilograms of that a week, zucchinis is probably 300kg, broccoli’s probably 30 or 40 boxes a week.”
Winter lines could soon include a pre-prepared stir fry mix.
“What you see in the supermarket on a conventional basis but done on an organic basis,” Neale said.
Shoppers can also pick up produce straight from the farm.
Farm Shed Organic Shop’s doors re-opened just over two months ago after a four-year break.
Andrew’s wife Jacquie had run the barn-like shop from 2006 but in 2011 started selling the farm produce from a store in Emerald.
“Then she introduced a cafe and the cafe was going well but the fruit and veg were probably dropping back,” Neale said.
“People couldn’t get their head around the two. They either wanted a cafe or they wanted fruit and veg, so the fruit and veg ended up coming back here.
“There’ll be some organic home deliveries starting again in, oh, give us about four weeks.
“What’s in the shop, probably 30 per cent of it’s actually physically grown on the farm.
“I’m selling broccoli to people that was still on the bush an hour ago. It’s there ready for them to buy. It’s super fresh.
“Those bunches of rainbow chard, Andrew picked half an hour ago.
“We do it cheap, too.
“Certified organic broccoli at the moment we’re doing for $3.99 which, it mightn’t sound cheap unless you buy organics, and if you buy organics that should be probably between $9 and $10 a kilo.”
Australian Green Growers also has a stall at Cockatoo market and supplies the Hills and Valleys Co-op, run by local mums Melanie Jessop and Alison Edwards.
They buy organic fruit and veg in bulk each week and divide the seasonal haul into family-sized boxes to make accessing the produce more affordable.
“When we buy for our shop we buy for the co-op as well, and obviously we supply them what we can from the farm here,” Neale said.
He and Andrew met playing for Emerald Cricket Club about 15 years ago.
“I had a business in Emerald but got out of that and he just asked me to come out and have a look at his books for him, because I’ve got a banking and finance background as well.
“Then it morphed into different things.
“When I came down here I knew he grew lettuce, that was about it.
“I knew nothing about organics and I know a lot more than I did but I don’t profess to know it all, that’s for sure.”
Neale said many customers turned to organics for their health.
“I don’t know about all that but what I do know about is what tastes good, and organic food just tastes better,” he said.
“The taste is spectacular.
“But the reality is if you spray something with lots of chemicals and then put it in your body, then I dunno, go figure.
“If you eat something that hasn’t been sprayed, it’s gotta be better.”
Andrew said the most basic thing people could do to be healthy was to eat healthy food.
“The way I look at it is we are what we eat,” he said.
“If we’re eating something that has a chemical residue in it …
“When you see what chemicals are sprayed and used in certain things and processed foods you can’t believe anyone would not eat organics.
“The difficult part is the expense of it. It can be double the price of conventional and that puts a lot of people off.
“We’re trying to keep our prices down so people can afford to buy organic because it’s really important.”
Parents concerned about their children’s diets, people with health issues and the health-conscious are Australian Green Growers’ target customers.
“But we’re not ramming it down people’s throat,” Neale said.
“It’s leading and providing an alternative.”
