Organic fare sells out fast
Demand for organically-grown produce in the East Kimberley is flourishing, with newly formed Ord River Organics selling out of produce at its first Kununurra Market stall on Saturday.
It was the first time Steve Gray had sold his biologically grown produce in Kununurra after he started share farming on his friend Sharon Mason's Packsaddle Road property earlier this year.
A fifth-generation banana farmer, Mr Gray moved to Kununurra two years ago after a five-year break from working the land; having previously operated Gray's Organic Produce in Broome until he sold the farm in 2009.
Mr Gray said earning the organic label on his produce was "just something that happened".
He started trialling biological farming methods on his Broome farm in 1998, after taking part in a biological farming course in Kununurra with doctor-farmer Arden Anderson.
Mr Gray said he soon realised the results of biological farming, in terms of better yields, reduced costs, absence of pests and disease, were phenomenal.
"We started his (Arden Anderson) principles; he told us that firstly the insects and disease would disappear … I thought it was a load of garbage, but we tried it anyway. We started getting good results," he said.
"Our yields when chemical farming went down and once we started to get into the biology, our yields started going back up again, so we kept going.
"We started to realise we didn't need the chemicals anymore."
For now, Ord River Organics will sell produce at the Kununurra Markets, but Mr Gray said he planned to sell bananas to Perth and the South West through a wholesaler.
He said demand for Ord bananas was high because of Carnarvon's struggles with Cyclone Olwyn and water restrictions and the main challenge with farming biologically in Kununurra was its heavy soil.
"To have the biology survive well … (you need) oxygen in the soil, so that's going to be a little more difficult than Broome sand, but for now we are starting to see real headways," he said.
