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The farmer comes to town

As economic pressures mount on farms, producers are turning to the internet.

John Thistleton
John Thistleton

Dean Bourlet of Wyntrade, who farms at Jugiong and sells direct.
Dean Bourlet of Wyntrade, who farms at Jugiong and sells direct.Katherine Griffiths
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As much as farmers would like us to savour their best produce, events seem to conspire against them. Supermarkets squeeze their profit margins and mix their meat with other producers' cuts. The weather dries up, leaving lambs and weaner calves short of water and pasture. And the cost of overheads, such as diesel and fertiliser, rocket to the point of driving the farmers from their land.

But online shopping is giving hope to farmers, connecting them directly to consumers in lucrative markets in capital cities and overseas. Here, they set their own prices and control their own distribution.

James and Hugh Bowman, of Moppity Meats.
James and Hugh Bowman, of Moppity Meats.Supplied
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Farmers such as Dean Bourlet of Jugiong, west of Yass, Vince Heffernan at Dalton, and brothers Hugh and Jamie Bowman, who farm between Young and Harden, are seeing years of pioneering paddock-to-plate enterprises flourish. They're among a growing group of farmers nationwide to sell direct, some now using Australia Post's Farmhouse Direct venture.

Bourlet took the direct route soon after beginning his white suffolk-dorset cross lamb farm near the Murrumbidgee River in 1997, selling online and through the Southside Farmers' Market in Woden. ''We do get a lot of inquiries from Sydney and Melbourne and overseas, the logistics of getting [our meat] there are quite massive,'' he says.

Bourlet, who brands his meat Wyntrade Lamb, must plan production at least 10 weeks ahead to ensure a continuous supply. His lambs are killed at the Cootamundra abattoir and taken to Harden, where he collects them for his online and farmer's market customers.

Vince Heffernan, of  Moorlands.
Vince Heffernan, of Moorlands.Stuart Walmsley

The markets aren't doing so well for him - his turnover has slipped 40 per cent in the past two years - but his remaining customers are welded on, including a woman whose husband lost his appetite after five heart attacks. Now, she says, it is much healthier.

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Driving up the Hume Highway on Sunday last week to run his stall, Bourlet hit a kangaroo near Bookham, leaving him more interested in exploring other ways of getting meat to people, including the Australia Post scheme.

In central Victoria, Tim Wyatt had been a chef and worked in the building industry when he and acupuncturist wife Deri-Anne Wyatt set up a small organic farm on the slopes of an extinct volcano in 2006. Almost seven years on, the pair's Angelica Farm is renowned for its garlic, which sells as far afield as far north Queensland. Wyatt admits that it hasn't been easy. ''It's hard; physically demanding,'' he says, ''but I have a really lovely office, and wouldn't want to be doing anything else.''

Tim Wyatt from Angelica Organic farm.
Tim Wyatt from Angelica Organic farm.Tegan Sadlier

The Wyatts' customers are doubtless grateful the couple decided to devote themselves to growing the food they love.

Like them, Kathy Barlow's workplace is home. Her country kitchen, at Wanalta in northern Victoria, is piled with baskets of fruit and tomatoes. The smell of spices fills the air from a pot of chutney on the stove. She grew up cooking preserves and chutneys at her grandmother's side, later selling them for the local school, which her four children attended.

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When council regulations tightened, she spruced up her family kitchen to be certified commercially so she could continue making her preserves.

''That's when I thought to myself, 'If I have gone to all this effort paying for hand-washing basins etc, I could actually make some money'.''

Barlow, who began selling online just over a year ago and now has customers in every state and territory, was one of the first to use the Farmhouse Direct site.

Near Gunning, Vince Heffernan keeps his customers abreast of his lambs with a regular newsletter, which covers all aspects of production at Moorlands, on the banks of the Lachlan River.

''The lambs are great - we are through the stresses of summer,'' he writes in his latest newsletter. ''These are always the loveliest lambs - freshly germinated clover, lots of leaves on trees and shrubs to browse. The sweet early shoots of annual grasses, and the heady aroma of natives, like weeping grass, in full production. Cooler nights and warm sunny days - what more could a lamb want for in life?''

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Through the newsletter, he tells customers where he's going to be next for deliveries - in Sydney in early April, at Eveleigh in the morning and Pymble in the afternoon.

''Please understand, we can only fit so many boxes in our coolroom-trailer,'' he says. ''Orders will be accepted based on when they arrive - ie, first in, best dressed. Thank you for your ongoing support and also understanding.''

Hugh and Jamie Bowman's Moppity Meats received a heavy dump of rain a fortnight ago and some more recent follow-up rain. Jamie Bowman's wife, Wendy, says although they still sell stock through saleyards, the direct side of their business is forging ahead since starting as a sideline hobby when friends in Sydney begged them for meat direct from the country.

''We have learnt so much through having that contact with customers - it's amazing; it has changed our perceptions,'' she says. ''We sell a lot of meat into Sydney and people in Sydney know what meat is, know their cuts, how it should taste, know when it is stressed. We do get to deliver meat along the north coast and some people up there contacted us to say they're coming through with a caravan and asked, 'Can we see you along the way?'''

Customers order from Moppity, Heffernan and others through their websites, then usually pick up the meat at nominated drop-off points - in the case of Moppity, these include the National Dinosaur Museum in Canberra's north and a site in Kingston.

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After the Moppity meat is butchered separately from contracted stock at the Cootamundra abattoir, it goes to a Young butcher, where it is hung - the beef for 12 days; the lamb for four.

''The aged meat is much more tender. You know when people talk about meat melting in their mouth, the more aged it is, the more you get that quality, particularly from beef,'' Wendy Bowman says. One of their Sydney customers freezes his orders and sends the meat to his daughter in Singapore.

With Farmhouse Direct, customers order and pay online and the producers mostly pack and send the products in discounted prepaid boxes. Australia Post's aim is to make up for that discount in the volume of deliveries.

''We looked at what was being sold online and saw both an opportunity and an area for potential growth,'' team leader Vivien Astl says. ''What we're offering is the opportunity to taste real products and not have to go to the supermarket.''

After less than a year, Farmhouse Direct has 150 farmers and food producers online, with another 360 about to come on board. Astl and her team are also confident that farmers co-ops will emerge in rural areas that will pack fruit and vegetable boxes and use Farmhouse Direct, giving online shoppers a one-stop shop for farmer-to-customer fruit and vegetable delivery.

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So far, the delivery of meat, fish and smallgoods with Farmhouse Direct is limited, as farmers need to deliver the goods themselves, in vehicles registered with state meat authorities. Australia Post, however, is examining the regulations and exploring recyclable cold delivery systems used in other countries.

Justin Telfer, from the Bangalow Cheese Co, and his team hand wrap and pack cheese to meet online orders. The cheeses are surrounded by frozen leak-proof gel inside a sealed polystyrene box and couriered overnight around the nation. The cheesery is 15 minutes out of Bangalow, inland from Byron Bay in NSW. Telfer sells through his website and uses couriers.

''The best thing for us, we are no longer separated by distance from almost any cheese lover in the country,'' he says. ''The nation is our market.''

John Thistleton is the Canberra Times regional reporter. With reporting from Richard Cornish.

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John ThistletonJohn Thistleton is a reporter for The Canberra Times.

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