More money for potato farmers
Posted
Tasmanian potato farmers are set to make more money from their crops.
The potato processor, Simplot Australia, and farmers have been negotiating prices for four months and have agreed to a 35 per cent price rise for the coming crop.
Simplot's managing director, Terry O'Brien, says both sides have ended up in a good place.
"The increase is dramatically greater than anything we've seen before, but so to are costs the growers are incurring to run their enterprises, so we understand that there was a need for this big movement," he said.
"But I think the net result is we've probably paid a bit more than we wanted to and the growers have probably accepted something a bit below their requirement."
"You've come out of a decade or more of what you'd have to call price deflation in food and we have trained the consumer and our customers to think that food gets cheaper or doesn't move, not goes up.
"There's a huge re-education process for the whole supply chain to understand that these costs have passed on."
