Fifteen years ago, the biggest challenge that faced the Tablelands food bowl was water security.
Now, it’s how far farmers have to send their produce to market, because they have to cover the freight costs to the metro distribution hubs.
“That central point has been moved to further and further away, to a location where there is a lot of consumption, but … regional areas [suffer] because it takes time to get all the way back,” Mr Keevers says.
“We can all grow crops, there’s no fear of that, and we’ve got big producers, and we’ve got small producers.
“But the key is they have to have a home for their goods.
“If they don’t have a home for it, they’ll go broke.”
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Griffith University’s Kimberley Reis, who researches local supply chains and how to make them more resilient, says the current model needs to improve.
“We don’t have a food system model that is based on supporting local and regional economies,” Dr Reis says.
She wants the big supermarkets to bring in local food procurement requirements, where food isn’t just grown locally, it’s also sorted in the region where it is grown.
In other words, “the produce doesn’t leave” the area at any stage.
“So that they [the big supermarkets] are showing good corporate responsibility to support the self-reliance and the resilience of that region,” she says.
But a Coles spokesperson says central distribution points and a national supply chain “is the most effective way for us to deliver value and quality for our customers”, with the same prices for shoppers in the supermarket giant’s city and regional stores.