Pistachio growers have had a record harvest this year, beating the previous record by 1000 tonnes. Growers are expecting harvests to triple in the next few years and are enjoying increased local and international demand. Long-time pistachio grower Chris Joyce has never seen better conditions.
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00:00Yes, I was one of the early growers. I started 40 years ago.
00:06And what got you into it so early?
00:09CSIRO released this pistachio tree, a new crop suitable for the Murray Valley, the hot
00:17arid conditions with supplies of irrigation water and recommended this crop. I together
00:24with a small number of other growers started it. We had a lot of troubles for the first
00:29decade or perhaps a bit more. We ran into diseases, didn't know how to farm them properly,
00:37did all of that. However, in the last 25 years, we've mastered all that and we now produce
00:44pistachios of the highest quality, worldwide, world accepted yields. It's a profitable business.
00:54So in the last decade, a lot more growers are joining us and have been planting more
00:59pistachios over the last decade.
01:01So it took a bit of determination from you and the other growers to stick through it,
01:06through those early years of getting used to it. What's the key to growing a good tree?
01:15A lot of experience and understanding how to grow pistachios in the Murray Valley under
01:20Australian conditions, Australian soils, Australian conditions. And that's taken a long time
01:28to do that. We've had lots of support from our international pistachio growers and other
01:33countries, particularly in Iran and in California. But you have to farm them differently in Australia
01:39and that, I think, is the biggest lesson we learned in that difficult first 15 years.
01:44And how do you farm them differently? Does it have to do with water or where you plant them?
01:50More to do with the nature of the soils. Very simply, we need less water more often than
02:00they do in California and Iran because of the relatively shallow soils that we use.
02:07We have.
02:09And so where has the bulk of the industry been established in Australia and how did
02:14it, how were you able to sort out that that was the best place?
02:19By chance, I think. The original recommendations was a lot wider area than we now farm, but
02:27more or less Swan Hill in the east to Wakery in the west along the Murray River. There's
02:36some in Griffith. There's some Pea Binger at Tilopia Downs. There were orchards planted
02:45in northern New South Wales. They have not been successful because of summer rainfall
02:51creating fungal problems. So roughly along the Murray is what has proved successful.
02:59And why was last season so good?
03:02A combination of good seasonal conditions, but more particularly, it was the emergence
03:09of the young trees that have been planted in the last decade are now starting to produce
03:15and that's what's driven up that extra thousand tonnes over the previous record is basically
03:20young trees now coming into production.
03:22Yeah, because that thousand tonnes is like 30% more approximately than the previous record,
03:29huh?
03:30Correct.
03:31And so did that lead to a price fall in Australia this year?
03:36There was a price fall this year in Australia, but that had nothing to do with the Australian
03:40crop. It was more to do with world supply. We're a commodity that has to compete with
03:47Iran and California and we have to follow their price levels. In the same vein for 25
03:56crop prices will go up.
03:59And do Australian producers only supply the Australian market at the moment?
04:04No, this year we started to do some, we've been doing some exports for a little while,
04:09but the volumes of export increased this year because of the record crop. We won't
04:14do so many in 25 crop, but we will do a lot more from 26 crop onwards. From 26 crop onwards,
04:22the new supply of trees will completely satisfy the domestic market. So we are working towards
04:29firstly expanding the domestic market by promoting Australian pistachios, but also we are looking
04:35to continue with the export markets that we have developed already.
04:40And is China the biggest export market you've got?
04:43Yes, it is.
04:45And so were there some pretty lean times for you, Chris? Because as you say, it takes a long
04:50time for a pistachio tree to grow. And so were you struggling for a while, but now you're pretty
04:56happy you're stuck with it?
04:57I'm extremely happy that I stuck with it. I must say that probably in the mid-late 90s,
05:05I thought of pulling all the trees out and planting them with Chardonnay. I'm very glad
05:10I didn't do that and persevered. That first 15 years was very difficult because of learning how
05:16to grow them. And we've had a couple of bad seasons. The El Nino year of 2011 gave us big problems,
05:24but we've managed to overcome them. And in farming, there are always good seasons and
05:29bad seasons, but we can now consistently do good seasons. We'll have the odd bad year,
05:36but we can do well and we know how to do it. And the industry is not unique, but is a little bit
05:44special in that because of the hardships of the early growers, the cooperation between growers
05:51in the pistachio industry is very, very high. We freely exchange information between all of
05:59our growers and they grow with us. So there's now about 50 pistachio growers in Australia
06:07and they all cooperate, work together, market together. And collectively, we're all learning
06:14from each other and we get on well together, which is somewhat unusual in agriculture.
06:25Because naturally you would think that the original ones would kind of want to protect
06:30their turf and not have too many people coming in and producing, but you welcome
06:34more and more people doing it. Yeah. We've long seen the need for critical mass.
06:41If you go back not long, not many years, we could only supply the Australian supermarkets with
06:49Australian pistachios for some months of the year and not a whole 12 months. So the supermarkets
06:55would stock Australian pistachios, then they start using imported and our next crop came along
07:01and we would want to supply them, but they've got carryover of stock. But now we can supply
07:07the major supermarkets 12 months of the year. Australian consumers can regularly purchase
07:13Australian pistachios year round. Sure, there's still imported pistachios in the market and
07:18frankly, there probably always will be some. And Chris, good stuff. Just one final question,
07:23most important question from my team here. They love their pistachios. They want to know
07:27from someone like you, what's the best dish you've had with pistachios in it?
07:33I make this fantastic pomegranate and pistachio cake. It is with lime and it's fantastic.
07:40Okay, well, we'll expect one at the ABC studios next week. Thanks so much for having chat to us,
07:47Chris. And yeah, good on you for sticking with something that you're passionate about
07:51and making a success of it.