On The Land
29 October, 2026
Farming future expands with new fruit venture
ALMADEN-based graziers James and Janelle O’Shea know what it’s like in terms of hard work and the effects of external factors when operating on the land.
Faced with the future of educating their children, the well-known couple were on the lookout for opportunities that would bring their young family closer to schools rather than face the other option of placing them in boarding schools to further their education.
That was nearly eight years ago.
Upon hearing of the availability of purchasing a producing orchard near Dimbulah, the couple weighed up their options and potential for the property and took the plunge. That was seven-and-a-half years ago.
The multi-cropping farm had 1000 Kensington Pride mango trees, 300 Keitt variety trees and 500 lime trees in full production.
Along the way, the lime trees were doubled to make 1000 in production.
The planned farming expansion was working well until around four seasons ago, the price for mangoes dipped because of oversupply and because of lack of return reality, around a quarter of the crop were left on the trees.
“We put our heads together and sought other avenues to obtain a return for our fruit that would have been otherwise lost as income producers if another oversupply occurred,” Janella said.
Ever on the lookout for diversification, the couple soon learned of a fruit drying business located on the Cassowary Coast that was for sale.
“James and I checked out the operation and the overall for potential, undertook some training and soon we had established our commercial drying company and operations Tropical Harvest on our Dimbulah farm,” Janelle said.
It soon followed that on-farm dried fruit production was an integral part of a system of vertical integration for the young couple’s agricultural and horticultural endeavours.
Over the past three-and-a-half years, the Tropical Harvest drying operations has expanded local employment opportunities, with a number of local residents cutting and slicing fruit to be dried at the on-farm preparation rooms,
“We continued to service the Tropical Harvest original customer base and have expanded many new outlets of our own as a healthy alternative range of dried fruit products,” Janelle added.
The whole Tropical Harvest drying process does not involve any chemicals at any stage.
“We use just radiant heat to dry our products, so there is absolutely no sulphur or anything else of a chemical nature used in our drying rooms,” she said.
In addition to their own mango and limes, Tropical Harvest also produces dried banana, pineapple, lemon, limes, dragonfruit, mango/lime, mango/passionfruit, papaya and other varieties that are purchased from a whole host of other fruit producers across the Far North.
Tropical Harvest services many local commercial outlets, as well as southern retail, and wholesale customers, with demand increasing for their expanding range of chemical-free quality dried fruit products.
