Facilitating a vegetable industry development service for northern Australia (VG98121)

This is a final research report from Hort Innovation’s historical archives. Please note that as these reports may date back as far as the 1990s, the content and recommendations within them may be superseded by more recent research.

What was it all about?

Industry development was the continuing strategic management process used by industry to enhance its level of capability and performance, through overseeing the initiation, management and delivery of programs, projects and services.

The Vegetable Industry Development Service (VIDS) – Northern Australia was initiated in response to growers wanting their research and development dollars spent on work they wanted done, and access to work they had already invested in. The main project goal was therefore to identify what the vegetable industry in Northern Australia needed in terms of information and technology to be profitable, sustainable and market-driven; and facilitate, coordinate and instigate processes to allowed those needs to be met.

Unlike other states of Australia, Queensland employed two Vegetable Industry Development Officers (IDOs) to undertake this work. The focus of one of the IDOs has been Research, Development, Extension & Communication; the other IDO has focussed on Market and Business Development.

Nine production areas of Queensland, two production areas of the Northern Territory, and two areas of Northern New South Wales comprised the target region. This represented a significant proportion and geographic distribution of Australia’s vegetable production.

The VIDS project was also designed to develop and facilitate sub-projects that enhanced the performance of vegetable-growing businesses through motivating information and technology information and take-up, and through motivating continuous improvement.

As a result of these two positions, the real industry benefits of this project were as follows:

• More inclusive participation of growers and other industry stakeholders in determining R&D priorities for levy investment and industry priorities
• Increased access to R&D and other information
• Identification of what needed to be addressed to ensure the industry moved forward – and the project initiated and implemented services to start addressing these issues
• Initiation of services such as Market and Business Development Application Service, Future Focus, Market Opportunities for Business, Trade Missions, Groups for Profit, and Market Development, increased assistance to growers in developing opportunities and better power in the market place being able to address the high priorities of the industry that focused on market development
• Identifying training needs and assisting in the organisation of this training to vegetable growers.