Though the season has finished, work continues with planning for the next season and learning from previous challenges.

COVID-19, labour shortages, and Queensland fruit fly continue to pose risks to business, which we are attempting to alleviate through forward planning.

At the end of May we held the APC Stonefruit sub-committee annual general meeting (AGM) at Masonmill Gardens in Carmel. Thank you to everyone who was able to attend, we appreciate you taking the time.

In mid-April Danny and I were able to join Citrus growers on a bus tour to AgriFresh and Moora Citrus.

The field day was about the digital tools they use in the orchard, which included monitoring the environment, irrigation systems, tracking of labour operations, frost fans and more.

Moora Citrus are currently trialling a protected cropping system with DPIRD, and looking at a range of measures to establish its cost/benefit ratio.

There were many learnings to take away from the field trip and the technologies we saw, some of which could be transferred to stonefruit orchards, to improve the orchard efficiencies and the quality of the fruit pack-outs.

We hope we can offer similar opportunities for Stonefruit growers in the coming seasons. Please let us know if there are particular places or things you would like to see and hear about.

We are grateful for our engagement with Buy West Eat Best over the years, especially the recent Good Choice campaign. In March they held their second retail activation at Belmont Forum. To leverage the event, we had Fresh Finesse run a stand for WA Stonefruit, in collaboration with Five Seasons Fresh, to display yellow and white peaches and red plums for customers to taste. This was a fantastic event in all, with excellent community engagement.

The Good Choice WA campaign is coming to the conclusion of its two-year time frame. This project provided a fantastic array of promotional events and advertisements to WA customers.

The campaign for WA Stonefruit went far and wide, with radio and TV in metro and regional areas, billboards, TransPerth bus sides and Xsight TVs in IGAs.

They also extended their support for the season launches, organisation of activations at Floreat Forum and Belmont, other community events such as Barbeque in the Burbs and WA Great Graze.

The BWEB logo and message are widely known in the WA community. Hence, participation in the campaign has been a valuable opportunity. We look forward to continuing our engagement with Buy West Eat Best in the future.

For more information contact Shay Crouch via shay.crouch@perthnrm.com or phone (08) 9374 3306.

@wastonefruit