International competitiveness

June 2008 | Future Orchards® Orchard Walk presentation

International competitiveness was a founding concern of the Future Orchards 2012 program. This presentation places Australian apple and pear production in a global context and asks growers to consider whether orchard productivity, fruit quality and unit costs are capable of competing with major overseas industries.

International comparison is useful because price alone does not determine competitiveness. Yield per hectare, the proportion of premium fruit, labour efficiency, orchard establishment costs, packout and the speed at which new plantings reach commercial production all influence the cost of producing a saleable kilogram of fruit.

The Future Orchards approach used overseas benchmarks to challenge assumptions about what Australian orchards could achieve. At the time, intensive systems in leading regions were demonstrating earlier cropping and substantially higher yields than the Australian industry average, highlighting the importance of orchard redevelopment and modern production systems.

For growers, the value of the resource is in using international comparisons as a prompt for business analysis rather than as a simple ranking exercise. Local climate, markets and costs differ, but benchmark data can identify where production systems require improvement if an orchard is to remain competitive.