General News
20 October, 2022
Region’s fruit bowl ripens
THREE million pineapples are being harvested at a Mareeba plantation as the region gets ready for a bumper fruit-bearing season, with lychees and mangoes just a few weeks away.
Growers are looking forward to a bountiful season, and workers are already starting to return to the region.
Some operations like Pinata Farms at Paddy’s Green, have already begun picking for the 2022 season, pulling the first pineapple out of the ground just last week with an estimated three million more to follow.
“The season is looking promising, the size of the pineapples is good – they are not too big and not too small, medium sizes which is right where we want them to be,” Mareeba farm general manager Stephen Scurr said.
“At this stage the quality is looking re-ally good and our aim is to give people nice fruit every day if we can.”
Mr Scurr said the past two seasons were not the best for pineapples but this year’s season was shaping up to be considerably better.
“At present as we speak prices are looking okay, last year was a horrid season and there was no money at all, poor prices and low demand,” he said.
“This year we are hoping demand will go up and we do grow pineapples in the southeast corner and in the last few weeks there have been okay prices and we are hoping those prices continue.
“We are not after massive prices, the consumer has to be able to afford it – good, steady prices is what we are chasing, year in year out.”
Lychees are just weeks away from being on supermarket shelves across Australia in bulk and local farmer Mark Taylor from Taylor’s Irresistible Orchards says his yield looks promising.
Mr Taylor typically expects to harvest around 20,000 trays of lychees this season, equivalent to 100 tonnes across a range of different varieties.
“The flowering was pretty good but probably a bit of an odd year with the weather pattern and different cycles of the flower, so the weather had a lot to do with how the fruit set,” Mr Taylor said.
“We are still looking at getting a good average yield across the board with the different varieties, obviously some are better than others, but it should all average out good.”
Like other fruit, the price of lychees is dictated by demand, with $25/kg regarded as a good price for lychees, however the price can dip as low as $7/kg if there is an oversupply of the fruit as the season continues.
Arriga mango farmer John Nucifora said mango growers in the Mareeba and Dimbulah areas were looking forward to a bumper season, with many farms seeing their fruit setting.
Mr Nucifora personally harvests over 100,000 trays of mangos and expects to see the same kind of output this season.
“We had a strong flowering and the Mareeba-Dimbulah area widely had a strong flowering, now we are coming into fruit set with a little drop,” he said.
“All in all, I think the region will be fairly strong as far as volume goes.
“The past few seasons have probably been a little bit leaner than this one, this one is a bit stronger.”
On his farm, Mr Nucifora is expecting to start harvesting mangoes in about eight weeks’ time but says growers in the Dimbulah and Mutchilba area could have fruit ready as early as the end of November.
With many different fruits starting to ripen across the regions, farm workers are going to be in high demand for as long as six months across the area.
Mr Nucifora said backpackers have slowly begun to return to the region and could see plenty of work at a host of farms on the Tablelands.
“We urge all seasonal workers to come to the area because there will be lots of work,” he said.
“The last two years since Covid, finding workers has been tight and this year numbers have been up and the seasonal workers have definitely started coming back in.”
