Farmers cashing in on cauliflowers

The cauliflower season in Tasmania has been financially bountiful but lacked the quality of previous years.

Tasmania’s cauliflower industry is worth $74 million annually and contributes 8 per cent to Australia’s total volume.

The vegetable is predominantly grown in the North West, Meander Valley and Coal Valley, with most sold to Harvest Moon and Simplot.

Tasmania’s cauliflower season generally runs from January to June, although Harvest Moon grows the vegetable year-round.

Kindred cauliflower grower Ian Charleston, who supplies vegetables to Simplot, said this year had been a challenging season for him, particularly regarding irrigation.

“The start of the season was perfect for harvesting and we had excellent conditions,” Mr Charleston said.

“But at the end of the season conditions got quite wet and during the last 10 days of the harvest it rained for six of them.”

Mr Charleston said despite the issues the volume of cauliflowers was still decent.

“We were a bit concerned because they were very small and they stopped growing because of the wet and the cold.

“We had to have a few days off where the factory wasn’t working and when they came back, the cauliflowers had blown out.”

Mr Charleston’s farm harvested 34 tonnes of cauliflowers this year.

However, many of those vegetables had to be either discarded or left in the ground.

“We had a lot left that weren’t up to quality because they had opened up, gone yellow or started to go flowery,” Mr Charleston said.

“In other years the quality has been better but we’ve only gotten 32 tonnes.”

Mr Charleston said he estimates that if he had sent off all of the cauliflowers it would have equated to 40 tonnes.

“It was a financially brilliant season, it was just disappointing that we had to throw out so much.”

Harvest Moon agricultural manager Jono Craven said it had been a relatively regular cauliflower season for the company.

“It was a dry and warm year, so that certainly helped production over summer months and into the autumn,” Mr Craven said.

“We’ve seen good quality and pretty good volumes, which makes everybody happy.”

Mr Craven said in the first half of 2025 Harvest Moon picked around 1.2 million heads of cauliflower.

“It’s not a small part of our business but cauliflowers are not our largest category.

“The bulk of our production are carrots, onions and broccoli, but cauliflower is a pretty important part of our brassica program.”

Compared to other parts of Australia, Mr Craven said Tasmania was an ideal location to grow cauliflowers due to its milder climate.

“In summer here we don’t get the high fluctuations of temperature that they do on the mainland. 

“What the consumer and producer don’t want are yellow cauliflowers; they like that beautiful white curd.”