The tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) has wreaked havoc on three South Australian enterprises recently. In response, experts are calling for an immediate, long-term management plan to address this crisis. In mid-August, the virus first spread at Perfection Fresh on the northern Adelaide Plains. It has led to disastrous crop yield decreases of up to 70 percent. As a consequence, thousands of jobs have been eliminated. This is largely due to the grower’s burden of demolishing thousands of infected plants.
Clare Scriven, member for the affected businesses, paint a dire reality. She reiterated that lack of foreign sales due to export restrictions are hurting growers in many states, stalling the recovery efforts of these producers. We know those three businesses have encountered immense challenges. Finally, he touched on the emotional and economic burden this has wracked upon his hometown ag community.
Impact on Businesses and Workers
One of the companies that has been most affected by the impact of the virus is Perfection Fresh. The company has been hit hard by export restrictions, which have added to its woes. Scriven said this work has really cracked open and protected access in high-impact jurisdictions. The other two have largely failed to hold them accountable.
Perfection Fresh’s Michael Simonetta offered his own story as a victim of the crisis. We cut down 1.2 million healthy plants from our production greenhouses. We wasted hundreds of tonnes of perfectly good, safe, edible fruit. The emotion of this decision was heavy, especially for Simonetta. I’m more hurt for our employees out of our local location at Two Wells. It was gut-wrenching, it was soul-killing, it knocked the breath out of me,” he said.
It was another blow for the agricultural sector, with Katunga Fresh in Victoria laying off workers earlier this year as well. This blow came just days after the virus was found on their property. The impacts of the coronavirus have spread well beyond state lines, causing fear and uncertainty for farmers and farm laborers to grow in equal measure.
Biosecurity Experts Weigh In
The National Management Group (NMG), consisting of biosecurity experts and industry representatives. They have decided that eradicating the ToBRFV from Australia is not “technically feasible” as it has spread across state borders. This decision followed months of negotiations over the impacts on industries impacted.
The virus has thrown so much at us. In turn, the NMG called for the immediate creation of a coordinated national strategy to manage them efficiently and humanely. In particular, they said we could create a national strategy for stewardship through collective action. Only by joining impacted industries together can we effectively respond to this crisis.
The third speaker, Simonetta, focused on how to address these kinds of issues in agriculture. And, honestly, the reality is growers deal with viruses on a daily basis throughout their lifespan and this is just another risk,” he said. He argued from the start that controlling the virus was going to be necessary as eradication was unrealistic in the face of global spread.
Looking Ahead
These South Australian growers are dealing with an unstable future. Simonetta said his business is unlikely to get back to full-scale production until January or February. The agricultural community is still reeling from persistent and compounding challenges. It needs to get past these challenges to bounce back from the aftermath of the ToBRFV outbreak.
