When we self-proclaimed this year as "The Year of Horticulture" we hoped we would be able to effectively celebrate the work our growers do, educate consumers and advocate to decision makers. We also hoped we could bring some fun and positivity into our industry, an industry which needs to shake off an image problem.
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Just over two months into a jam-packed year, we have already learnt a lot about guerilla, pop up style, overnight activations. Of course, they're a lot of work but it's also a lot of fun to interact with consumers and showcase our amazing produce differently. However, more importantly, we have furthered our understanding of the knowledge and understanding gaps between growers and those we grow for.
Three of our learnings from the last few months have been:
We need to focus on educating our consumers as once they understand, they are our staunchest advocates.
Consumers genuinely want to know more about food production and find what growers may consider to be mundane, run of the mill information, quite fascinating. On the weekend one of the carrot fact signs read "you can fit 2000 carrot seeds in a teaspoon". This one fact alone sparked conversation about how carrots are sown, how long they take to grow and what the impact of water and fertiliser is on taste.
We need to speak more about each link in the fresh produce supply chain and market our impact on employment.
Consumers have very little knowledge of the supply chain of fresh food, however, are interested in it. COVID has given us all a unique understanding of the impact of even one broken link. When we explain the variety of jobs in the horticultural supply chain we can see consumers start to comprehend the industry's economic and social impact.
The feedback from retailers about what a consumer wants in fresh produce 'specs' should be up for debate. The mini pineapples from our first activation consumers thought were fabulous for 'purse size breakfast food'. They also commented they were a 'no waste' size and that they didn't like putting a half-cut pineapple back in the fridge. Are retail specs really what the consumer wants?
We can't wait to see what else we unearth this year.
