Don't pay so you can read it. Pay so everyone can!

Don't pay so you can read it.
Pay so everyone can!

Poor regulations and bureaucratic corner-cutting threaten ecosystems on the NSW’s Mid-North Coast and are a risk for blueberry consumers across Australia. Andrew Gardiner reports.

Australians face a little-known but very real health hazard thanks to blueberry pesticide regulations green-lit by an agency in the throes of moving to Barnaby Joyce’s backyard. Meanwhile, the region growing those blueberries, once famous for bananas, faces ecological catastrophe from the kind of regulatory regime you’d see in a banana republic.

Consumers of blueberries in Australia – a $440 million crop in NSW’s Mid North Coast region – face possible health hazards, including headache, sweating, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, loss of coordination, muscle twitching, and even death (at very high doses) from dimethoate, a neurotoxin that kills fruit fly and other pests but can also attack the human nervous system.

Dimethoate is banned in Europe and elsewhere, but it can be harvested and sent to Australian supermarkets within a day of being sprayed on blueberries.

“To me, that’s unsafe for Australian consumers. Raspberries and blackberries have to wait a week and tomatoes 21 days before they’re sent to market, and I’m yet to receive a satisfactory, scientific explanation as to why blueberries can hit the shelves in 24 hours,” a Mid-North Coast agronomist advising local activists told MWM.

It seems that commerce, and political expediency, take priority over public health.

The US Environmental Protection Agency classified dimethoate as a “possible human carcinogen,” but that appears not to have bothered the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), which set the one-day blueberry withholding period.

Editor’s Note: The APMVA maintains that this is “consistent with good agricultural practice” – find their full statement here.

APVMA relocation controversy

A scathing 2023 report alleged “industry capture, poor workplace culture and a lack of corporate knowledge and leadership” at APVMA after then-agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce moved the agency to Armidale, in the heart of his electorate.

The APVMA responded to those claims in November 2024, stating that “The APVMA has already made significant progress to address the findings in the Rapid Evaluation and other reviews to improve its operations, workplace culture, governance, transparency, accountability and stakeholder engagement”

Joyce and his successor, Bridget McKenzie, drove APVMA’s relocation from Canberra to Armidale, 750 km away, although just 15 employees actually made the move. This contributed to a massive brain drain and “serious and systemic issues”. APVMA chief executive Lisa Croft and chair Carmel Hillyard both resigned following Labor’s election win in 2022.

AVPMA’s move to Barnaby Joyce’s Armidale backyard was so poorly conceived, sources told MWM, that relocated public servants were at one stage forced to bring their laptops and work at a local McDonalds for lack of suitable office facilities.

The then-Nationals leader had a sloganistic retort for critics of the move: his grand plans for decentralisation would spread the largesse of government “in a more abundant way across the nation, not have it in little pockets, or one pocket, called Canberra”.

Barnaby Joyce’s decision to move pesticides regulator a huge financial risk

Blueberry aficionados aren’t the only ones vulnerable to dimethoate and other chemicals. Run-off from blueberry farms reportedly does lasting damage to the ecosystem of waterways such as teeming-with-life Hearnes Lake (pictured below) while chemicals leach into ground water around Coffs Harbour and the Nambucca Valley, say scientists.

Blueberry farming is an intensive affair, with heavy rain often pushing a cocktail of fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides into creeks and rivers. Among the impacts on aquatic life, the agronomist told MWM, were a catastrophic fish kill in 2018 and, more recently, “prawns switching genders from male to female,” linked in some eyes to high levels of a herbicide which can warp sexual development.

Blueberry pesticide pollution

Dimethoate and other chemicals threaten the ecology of NSW’s Mid-North Coast (above). Image supplied.

Area in crisis

Activists insist the area is now in crisis.

“Hearnes Lake isn’t dead yet, but it’s almost there. Scientist Maxine Rowley found 12 chemicals in Hearnes Lake, and two of those had been banned in NSW since 2006,” the agronomist told MWM.

Therein lies the problem for both the local ecology and blueberry consumers: with honourable exceptions, there’s a disturbing lack of enthusiasm for curbing the excesses of the burgeoning blueberry industry at all levels of government.

Pesticide and chemical monitoring are NSW government responsibilities, but regulatory action is rare and sometimes of questionable value. Just last year, the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) proclaimed that “Nambucca waterways (are) not impacted by excessive pesticides,” only to be pilloried by community groups who pointed out they were monitoring outflows in the wrong place.

Often it’s left to those community groups – like Maxine Rowley’s Sandy Beach Action Group (or SANDBAG for short) –along with academics and activist councillors to pick up the slack. They’re enthusiastic but underfunded and limited in what they can do, a reality that doesn’t seem to bother the blueberry farmers or their local state member, National Party deputy leader Gurmesh Singh.

Inadequate regulation

At a council level, activists say regulations aimed at putting a lid on the ecological carnage are either on the books but not adequately enforced (in Coffs Harbour) or in the works but held up by state authorities (with the devil in the detail) in Nambucca Valley.

“As things stand, other primary producers, from wine to beef cattle, must put in Development Applications (DAs), conform to safety and impact protocols and allow neighbours to have a say,” Nambucca Valley councillor Susan Jenvey told MWM. “But not blueberry farmers, who employ hundreds of people and can just go ahead.

So you get spray drift (into neighbouring properties) and soil nitrogen levels that are hundreds of times above normal.

“Consent (for more berry farming) must have strict conditions attached, and that’s where we intend to fight,” the agronomist added on the still-to-be-finalised regulations for Nambucca Valley. A meeting between councillors and the NSW Department of Primary Industries to sort out details of a DA regime is scheduled for February.

MWM is not suggesting ministers, agencies, politicians, councillors, or blueberry farmers have acted illegally or unethically in their conduct on this matter. Yet they showed little enthusiasm to be questioned about it.

We reached out to representatives of the above, and the only response (aside from Coffs Harbour Council’s “no comment”) was from APVMA, which pointed out its review of dimethoate on blueberries preceded the agency’s move to Armidale.

Growers respond

Growers’ group Berries Australia has the unenviable task of fighting the tide of public opinion and popular notions that blueberry farming is unsustainable, destructive to surrounding waterways and exploitative of the many seasonal workers brought in to pick the crop.

“We don’t support any growers not complying with the rules,” its executive director, Rachel McKenzie, said.

But there’s a reason notions like these become popular. Some seasonal workers from Fiji told local activists they were paid the equivalent (per kg) of just $12 per hour, less than half the award rate of $29.33. After long hours in the sub-tropical sun, they rest up in igloo dormitories and reportedly aren’t always paid.

“I know of some workers who say their pay doesn’t always make it home to their families in Fiji. There appears to be little in the way of enforcement of award rates and conditions, and the whole system seems geared to simply keep the wheels of commerce turning,” the agronomist told MWM.

On the issue of pesticides in waterways, local media reports that in blueberry-rich Woolgoolga, north of Coffs Harbour, more than half of inspections by the NSW EPA from 2021-23 sparked formal investigations. That’s a remarkable figure, said a source for this story, indicating widespread flaunting of the rules.

While offending farms were forced to lift their game on wastewater capture, irrigation systems or pesticide storage, activists say there are plenty more simply slipping through the cracks and that more inspections are a must. Councillor Jenvey told MWM:

There’s a history of environmental impacts from blueberry farms; the land is seen as a resource rather than something to be cared for.

“As things stand, the number of farms transitioning to berries is growing exponentially. Our ecology is being overwhelmed.

Blueberry Hill thrills

Bridget McKenzie, who oversaw the final stages of AVPMA’s move, and state and federal Nationals Gurmesh Singh both enjoy close ties with the blueberry farmers of Coffs Harbour. They have demonstrated in word and deed a commitment to larger agricultural (and mining) concerns like Oz Group Co-op, formerly Oz Berries, which accounts for the vast majority of the sector on NSW’s Mid North Coast.

Activists believe this helps explain why blueberries can be shipped off to supermarket shelves within a day after being dipped in dimethoate, a “possible human carcinogen,” and why the waterways and marine life of NSW’s Mid North Coast appear to be choking on a poisonous flow that few in government have lifted a finger to stop.

While Labor took charge at both state and federal levels in 2022-23, not a lot appears to have changed since then.

“Until this disaster becomes a public scandal as we saw over intensive farming on the Hawkesbury and Nepean Rivers (north and west of Sydney), official attention will be tepid at best,” the agronomist said.

Hundreds of dead fish (in 2018) didn’t get us there; does someone have to die for us to get attention?

Saving Tasmania’s Maugean Skate – a victim of extinction politics

 

Andrew Gardiner

An Adelaide-based graduate in Media Studies, with a Masters in Social Policy, I was an editor who covered current affairs, local government and sports for various publications before deciding on a change-of-vocation in 2002.

Don't pay so you can read it. Pay so everyone can!

Don't pay so you can read it.
Pay so everyone can!

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This