A new proposal will be put before the Victoria Farmers Federation (VFF) at a conference in Melbourne tomorrow which will potentially force major supermarket chains to sell only Australian grown fruit.
If successful, the proposal will see supermarkets only stocking Aussie grown fruit in their home-branded, packaged fresh fruit products as reported by abc.net.au.
VFF’s president, Peter Tuohey, said that the push to exclusively sell Australian grown fruit is highly important for the country’s agricultural industry.
"It's important, particularly those Goulburn growers to try and sell their fruit because of the high cost of Australian production," he said.
"It's been left off the shelf and been replaced by imported products."
Victoria’s Goulburn Valley region has come under extreme pressure from the rise of imported products. Earlier this year SPC Ardmona informed 170 growers that they are no longer needed which left many growers stuck with produce that they could not sell.
It has also been reported that over 750,000 unwanted fruit trees in the region are expected to be burned by spring to avoid the attraction of pests and associated diseases to the area.