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VIDEO: Free-style organics

Fourth generation horticulturalist Nathan Free is striving to give consumers access to a consistent supply of high quality, organic produce at an affordable price. Anna Game-Lopata reports.

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Late one Monday afternoon, photographer Andrew Britten and I arrived at the Swan Hill region of northern Victoria to meet organic farmer Nathan Free at his family farm, Duralgai Horticulture in Tresco.

While his father Kelvin and uncle Colin undertake most of the farming, Nathan is managing director of the Wattle Organic Group, which markets and distributes organic produce from Duralgai under both the Alkira and Woolworth’s Macro brands, along with supplementary lines from outsourced suppliers to supermarket, wholesale and export customers.

Duralgai, which means ‘sunshine’ in the local indigenous dialect, was started by the Free family in 1943 on just over 12 hectares with cows, sheep and pigs.

It was Nathan’s grandfather who put in the first table grapes, a few melons and onion seed.

Nathan’s father and uncle took horticulture further, developing the property into over 280 privately owned hectares incorporating conventional wine grapes and stoned fruit. Nathan’s dad looked after the stoned fruit and his uncle the wine grapes; that hasn’t changed.

Always innovative, the Free family never completely adopted conventional farming, preferring to use composting, soil management and soft fungicides rather than harsh chemicals.

It seemed a natural progression for them when, eight years ago, the stoned fruit market took a dive and they decided to convert the operation to certified organic production starting with stoned fruit and moving into vegetables later.

“We wanted to produce a premium line of fruit in the mainstream market using biologically managed soils and minimal inputs but it wasn’t a sustainable business,” Nathan explains.

“Going organic has given us the small premium we needed to balance our extra production costs as well as increasing our lines and marketability. It’s also enabled us to invest in a year-round packing business which has created energy in the district.”

But Nathan asserts the best thing about going organic was the realisation of his long held desire to supply consumers with a genuine healthy product at a fair price.

“We want to grow our business so that more people can access organic fruit. We are working to grow our markets, to supply more consumers.

“We’re striving toward a future of sustainable farming, where we can produce high quality fruits and vegetables that taste great but also do the right thing by the environment.”

Don’t miss the full feature in New Farm Machinery magazine issue 20, on-sale March 30. Subscribe to the magazine now to never miss an issue.

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Photography: Andrew Britten | Video: Andrew Britten

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