WA’s Zeke Zalsman wins horticulture industry’s Young Grower of the Year award

A second-generation capsicum and eggplant farmer from the Peel region has scooped one of Australian horticulture’s biggest accolades after being crowned Young Grower of the Year. Zeke Zalsman, 32, beat eight national finalists to claim the prestigious gong at the Horticulture Awards for Excellence in Melbourne on June 5. He was recognised for his “commitment to sustainability, zest for innovation” and “passion for delivering high-quality product to consumers”, award sponsor Corteva Agriscience said. “My parents started over 30 years ago as field growers, and over time we’ve built greenhouses and learnt the different features we need for our unique Perth climate,” Mr Zalsman said. “In the summer, we get extreme UV and heat, and then when you come into winter, it gets quite cold and there’s not a heap of light hours. Capsicums are quite a delicate plant, and in the field the growing window is quite limited.” Mr Zalsman, who runs his family’s Zaldeesh Farms at Oldbury, is tackling these challenges using high-tech greenhouses with heating and cooling capabilities, shade screens that are automatically controlled based on radiation levels, and a computer-operated CO2 system. He is the first grower in Australia to adopt heat pump technology commercially for greenhouse heating, which has cut costs and increased production and quality. “We had been circulating water through pipes heated by LPG to keep optimum temperatures during the night and winter, but the cost increases meant we had to start running the greenhouses at a lower heating capacity,” Mr Zalsman said. Production loss, reduced quality and an increase in disease prompted Mr Zalsman to seek out the relatively new technology which, while being adopted in Europe, is more commonly used in industrial hot water applications such as heating public swimming pools. Using the environment as a heat source, such as residual atmospheric heat, pumps can produce more energy than they consume. Mr Zalsman — who also grows pomegranates using wastewater from the greenhouses — said it had reduced the farm’s energy costs by 25 per cent. He attributed his success since returning to the business five years ago to a “trial-and-error approach”. “In the past five years, I don’t think there’s been two years in a row where we’ve done completely the same thing,” he said. “We’ve tried diversifying with different crops and while it’s not necessarily worked for us, we might have learnt something about how to manage or get the best use of our technology by growing another crop that needs something different than capsicums do. “We’ve not necessarily stuck with that crop, but we have been able to bring what we’ve learnt from that back into the capsicum growing.” Mr Zalsman is also on a mission to upscale the operation to ensure consistency of supply, including by boosting winter production. “I’d like it to get to a point where we have a very good supply across the entire season, and eliminate or reduce the need for product to come in from New Zealand,” he said. “It would be nice to be able to supply enough to enable WA to be fully local.” The award ceremony coincided with Hort Connections, the horticulture industry’s premiere annual conference. Corteva marketing manager Nick Koch called Mr Zalsman an “inspiring young leader”. “Zeke should be congratulated for his pioneering efforts to increase the accessibility of a technology capable of future-proofing protected cropping businesses against rising costs, carbon footprint and threats to social licence,” Mr Koch said. AUSVEG chief executive Michael Coote said the awards were about celebrating up-and-comers in an “innovative, resilient and vibrant industry”. “These inspiring young growers represent the future of our industry and provide a chance to look forward at the challenges we need to face, and the skills we can see developing to overcome them,” he said. “It’s an exciting time to be in agriculture.”