Supermarket giant, Woolworths, says the present concentration of Australia's banana industry in the Tully and Innisfail region of northern Queensland is a "potential recipe for disaster".
Michael Batycki, Woolies' national general manager for fresh foods, urged the industry to pursue a wider geographical spread of production or the next cyclone that devastated banana farms around Innisfail and Tully could open the door to import competition.
Mr Batycki said Woolworths intended to stick with its local suppliers despite Biosecurity Australia's recent decision to allow imports of cavendish bananas from the Philippines.
"We deal with a large number of growers in the Innisfail and Tully region and some other regions as well, including Humpty Doo (in the Northern Territory)," he said.
Woolworths wasn't in discussions with any Filipino banana suppliers nor had the company bothered to check the conditions under which imports would be allowed, Mr Batycki said.
He said Woolies was looking forward to doing good business with its trusted and proven Australian banana suppliers for many years to come and didn't see any need to import product.
But Mr Batycki said another Cyclone Larry, which devastated the Innisfail and Tully banana farms in 2006 and reduced the availability of bananas in Australian shops to an expensive trickle, could change things.
He said Larry's decimation of 90 to 95 percent of Australia's banana crop around Tully and Innisfail (about 12,500ha) had provided good reason for growers to seriously consider the advantages of spreading Australia's banana output into other regions.
Bananas were the number one seller in supermarket farm produce sections, he said, and the challenge for local growers was to supply fruit that was as good as or better than imported product.
And any lengthy disruption of local supplies would "expose" growers to the risk of import competition and more geographical diversity of production would help overcome this problem, Mr Batycki said.
Ironically, the local industry has bitterly opposed Filipino banana imports for the best part of a decade because of fears they could introduce diseases such as black sigatoka and moko that potentially could decimate production in Tully and Innisfail (and elsewhere) just as effectively as any cyclone.
Growers in the Tully Valley have managed to eradicate black sigatoka once before but fear they won't be so lucky again.
Email a friend