Agri Gossip

By Eliza Rogers
As the Queensland strawberry season draws to a close this week, with prices expected to fall, one producer is going high tech.
Prices for the 26 million kilogram crop dipped to record lows of $0.99 a punnet, below the desired $2 as ideal weather conditions produced an explosion of fruit.
Rising costs mean growers are looking for ways to improve efficiency.
President of the Australian Strawberry Growers Association of Queensland, Bill Sharpe, says some things need to change to beef up strawberry consumption into the future.
"It was like the perfect storm - we had perfect growing conditions, the only thing we didn't have is the population to eat more of them."
Mr Sharpe says strawberries are one of the most expensive crops because operations are so labour-intensive and there are lots of workers to pay.
But one big grower is turning things around.
Ray Daniels, from Sunray Strawberries, near Caboolture, grows almost two million plants and employs 220 people.
He says it's difficult to set up an efficient farm labour system with backpacker pickers, so he's called on technology for an answer.
"A lot of their motivation is only for a three-month visa, so at the end of three months, we're trying to retrain and get a new workforce again. When we get busy, their three months is up and they move on," Mr Daniels said.
"We started on trying to build a field robot.... We were missing a bit of a fruit with the variables... so we decided we would use our technology to harvest hydroponically-grown strawberries."
Mr Daniels has been working on the concept for four years and says he's making progress sourcing the funding needed to drive it forward.