GALLERY - Award winners from Harvest Moon annual growers' dinner

North-west vegetable growers the Craigie family have been recognised for the exceptional produce that is grown on their Heathermoor and Springbanks farms for Harvest Moon.

At last Thursday night’s Harvest Moon annual growers’ dinner at Forth, Andrew Craigie accepted the Excellence in Agriculture award as well as the brown onion production award.

In accepting the award Andrew said it was an honour and achieved thanks to the sharing of knowledge from field officer Josh Wing and being pushed to do better every year.

The recognition of Josh’s role as a long-serving and integral member of the business was magnified when he was announced as the new head of agriculture at Harvest Moon.

Harvest Moon managing director Mark Kable said that Josh brings a deep understanding of the business, the people and the growing operations to the role.

“We’re particularly proud to see another senior leadership position filled from within our own team. Developing our people and creating opportunities for them to grow with the business is incredibly important to us, and Josh’s appointment is a great example of that in action,” he said.

Grower awards were also presented to Neil Johnson, who has been cropping and managing farmland in the Kindred region for more than 40 years, for carrot production, Gawler farmers Stuart and Chelsea Applebee who operate Esandsea Farming, for beans, Talandra Trading’s Perry family at Sassafras for broccoli and Justin and Cathy Shephard of Shephard Holdings for “snackables” carrots.

The Encouragement Award, presented to a rising star of vegetable growing, went to Naris Samarasinghe, operating under NJS Family Trust.

Mr Kable said that it’s vitally important to recognise the hard work of the grower base and extended team and efforts they put in each year to grow “these magic vegetables that we sell around the world”.

With growers in every state of Australia, he reiterated that Tasmania is the biggest and most important supplier.

Admitting it had been one of the toughest seasons on record, he commended growers for maintaining supplies.

“I don’t think consumers realise how lucky they are to have such quality produce year-round and at such cheap prices,” he said.

Field officers reported on the ups and downs of the past season, one that had been particularly challenging for farmers.

Bede Archer said that bean growers experienced a colder and windier spring start than usual which slowed crop development and extended the planting window.

“We fell well short of our budgeted tonnage of 940 tonnes, finishing at 650 tonnes for the season,” he said.

“Then towards the end of the season we faced disease and rain events, and it felt like a bit of doom and gloom - but the middle of the season improved and we saw good results and extra quality beans coming through.

“Stuart Applebee continues to perform strongly year after year. His crop stood out for overall quality, consistency and strong returns, particularly through summer with the conditions we faced this season.

Field officer Fenella Pinner  also mentioned the challenging start to the season but said once carrots were finally planted they grew strongly and harvest was about two weeks later than normal and interrupted with multiple harvester breakdowns.

“We finished harvesting in July and it was a great yield average of $12,000 per hectare,” she said.

“Our best carrot grower Neil Johnson had 69 percent class one carrots and only 4 percent waste and he’s a big believer in cover crops and bioflora which might have assisted with such a fantastic crop.”

Dylan Bellchambers said the early onion program was “the worst we’ve seen” and the late harvest put the pressure on onion reserves in storage.

Those planted later and harvested in February and March were exceptional, with some growers getting the best returns they’ve ever achieved.

“Playing a big part in that was debuting our new precision spot sprayer and we have been blown away by its capacity to change our growing systems by reducing chemical usage, the number of passes in paddocks but also driving yield quality - it’s been a big player in onions and we covered 1500ha with that six-metre machine,” he said.

“Another help with efficiency was the new Dobmac Topair single row direct load harvester and two custom built  trailers which lifted capacity up 60 percent a day on intake.”

“The only downside was having to order a new forklift to keep up!”