Great Southern food mapping project forging ahead
Mapping Great Southern food production and processing businesses and their current and future production capacity is the first step to understanding the capability of the region as a whole with a view to identifying new opportunities.
As a major part of the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia’s (DAFWA) Food Industry Innovation Project and made possible through Royalties for Regions investment, the Specialised Food Centre is focusing on the large number of premium agrifood businesses already operating in the Great Southern and Wheatbelt region.
Mapping the location of those businesses and their current and future production capacity is the first step to understanding the capability of the region as a whole with an ultimate view to identifying value-adding and collaborative opportunities.
DAFWA formed an important partnership early on in this project with Regional Development Australia Great Southern (RDA) to produce a food production and processing map, now headed by the RDA’s newly appointed research officer Andrew Bathgate.
Surveys were sent out mid October and responses have been flowing in from primary producers and processors from across the Great Southern.
“This is the starting point of a process where we are ultimately trying to match market opportunities with capacity in the region,” Andrew said.
“The overall objective of the state government is to double the value of agriculture by 2025 and this project is a small part of that bigger picture.
“We have designed a survey for farmers, fishing groups and processors to gather information that will help us work out what production is occurring in the region and what their capacity on the ground is.”
The survey has been emailed to a contact database that was created specifically for this project and other methods of promotion will be through websites, posters, mail outs and meeting as many businesses as possible face to face to improve the response rate.
Andrew said they had already received great support from grower groups and local councils that were happy to help promote the survey to their members.
“With the survey results we will develop a food map which shows the extent and intensity of production in different parts of the Great Southern region,” he said.
“We are also trying to determine what constraints there are that might limit growth to business development, such as collaboration between growers, capital constraints, access to markets, market information, input costs and availability of labour. This is all with the view to try and enhance capacity to overcome those constraints.”
In addition to getting the survey underway, the Specialised Food Centre team have secured financial support for the survey from local councils and shires, who are interested in the data because it will help develop a product register for the region.
This product register will be useful for councils to direct groups, who are interested in buying products from the region, to one place that lists what type of products and where they are available.
Financial support has already come from the Great Southern Development Commission, South Coast Natural Resource Management, City of Albany, Shire of Denmark, Shire of Plantagenet, Shire of Cranbrook and Shire of Gnowangerup.
And in-kind support from Gillamii Centre, North Stirlings Pallinup Natural Resources, Albany Regional Commercial Horticulturalists, Great Southern Food Network, Lower Great Southern Economic Alliance, Shire of Broomehill-Tambellup and Greenskills.
The survey will close on December 2. If you are interested in participating, and are a food producer or processer in the Great Southern region, please contact DAFWA’s Specialised Food Centre Manager Nikki Poulish.
Phone: +61 (0)8 9892 8415 or email nikki.poulish@agric.wa.gov.au