From garnish to side dish - WA farmer growing saline bush foods hopes to change perceptions

Cracking into the retail market and “demystifying” native saline bush foods will play a key role in the blossoming industry’s future, according to a WA farmer driving its expansion. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, demand for native Australian bush foods had never been so high. But in the blink of an eye, it was all taken away as the hospitality industry was forced to shut up shop as the country went into lockdown. It was a hard pill to swallow for Badgebup farmer David Thompson, who just days earlier had visited Sydney with gourmet food supplier Lance McLeod to market their native food enterprise Moojepin Foods. The pair — who supply saltbush, samphire, pigface and ice-plant grown on Mr Thompson’s property to high-end restaurants across the country — were met with fierce interest by wholesalers looking to put saline bush foods on the plate at fine dining establishments across the State. “It was all looking gangbusters and really, really exciting,” Mr Thompson said. “We wouldn’t have been able to keep up with all of the orders. “But by the time we got back only a few days later all the orders disappeared and we had no orders for four months.” It drove them to consider expanding their horizons outside of the food service industry. “We think we should really explore the retail side of it and look at value adding through drying of leaves, pickling, making salts and rubs,” Mr Thompson said. “That’s the sort of thing people can buy and it’s not perishable.” Changing consumer’s perceptions of the plants — particularly samphire — from a garnish to a vegetable would also be vital, according to Mr McLeod. “The long-term key is to replicate what Europe is doing with the product,” he said. “There’s a farm there that produces 250 tonne a season ... mainly for retail. As part of a four-year research project, Mr Thompson is trialling three different growing methods of several saline species to investigate their merit, with the hope to help other growers make use of degraded salt-affected land on their properties. “There’s a lot of work to do, but I think it’s exciting and I’m happy with where we are at this stage,” he said. Dubbing it “the dream”, Mr McLeod hoped more farmers would take the plunge, enabling them to form a co-op capable of producing consistent product and bigger volumes that could be marketed around the country, if not around the world. “The native space, native foods in general, the demand has never been as high as it is now,” Mr McLeod said. “I think that’s off the back off a lot of social media and cooking shows.” “There’s a huge demand across the whole country... and a lot of growers can’t keep up.” Supplying supermarkets and greengrocers would not only lead to industry expansion, but provide consistency for growers and those harvesting the produce, which is done by hand at this stage. “That way we’d have consistent orders,” Mr Thompson said. “You’d pick every week to a known amount. At the moment it varies from 5-35kg a week, you never know what they’ll need.”