GROWING the horticultural industry in the North is a central focus of five new projects announced last week.
The projects were identified by the Cooperative Research Centre for Northern Australia and will receive more than $1.6 million in government funding.
They include looking at opportunities to expand the horticulture sector across Northern Australia, and health projects including developing eye screening services for communities in remote Northern Australia.
The projects will be undertaken throughout North Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia.
In North Queensland, a focus will be on expanding the niche market of ‘bush tucker,’ with Indigenous groups at the helm.
Growcom will work with Burdekin based Gudjuda Aboriginal Corporation to expand their horticulture program, with a focus on traditional native foods and medicines.
Growcom’s lead Innovation Coach Steve Tiley said the bush tucker industry was currently worth about $60 million but he believed in time could be worth up to a billion.
“The native and bush tucker food industry, there’s an under supply of it so we’re looking at expanding it,” Mr Tiley said.
“So we’re looking to supply both the domestic and international markets, and the project is working through a sequence, where we will look at commercial veggie growing first through a market garden process, where we can just start with our known commercials and then start to expand into native foods.
“Currently it’s around a $60 million industry, so it’s very small in the whole horticulture sector which is worth billions, so it could certainly go into a multimillion dollar or potentially billion dollar product once the supply chains have been set up.
“And it's just not about bush tucker, we’ve got to double our production of horticulture in Queensland by 2040 to keep up with demand, so engaging with Indigenous communities brings in some extra set of resources we don’t have at the moment.”
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan said he was particularly focused on seeing agricultural growth in the North.
“To our north are the major growing economies in the world in Asia and as they get richer they will demand high quality protein, high quality produce and we have that here in spades in Australia and we have the potential to expand, particularly in Northern Australia,” Mr Canavan said.
