While Tasmania's agricultural industry is known for producing a variety of world-class fruit - wine grapes, stone fruit and berries among them - the avocado has not traditionally been known to grow well in the state's farmsteads - but a growing trend among farmers could be set to change that.
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Harvest Moon, a 40-year producer in the state's far north, has set about trialing avocados amid the hectares of carrots, beans, broccoli and cauliflower it produces each year.
According to Mark Kable, agricultural director at Harvest Moon, avocado growing in such an unfamiliar region was first pioneered by a small hobby farm.
"This chap, who was originally an avocado grower from Western Australia, moved here to retire, bought a hobby farm, got bored and started planting avocados," he said.
"We all thought he was mad, but everyone was closely watching to see what he was doing and if he was going and proved us wrong. Then he started producing these magnificent fruits!"
Shucking conventional wisdom that avocados simply wouldn't take in a climate as Tasmania - the pioneering WA man had proved to the local growers that the fruit will indeed take in soil.
With the Tasmanian-grown fruit in hand, Mr Kable and his team decided to plant a few hectares of avocados to see how they would fare in Harvest Moon soil.
"Well, we put our first few in the ground two and half years ago and they're going extremely well."
Fast forward to today and following the success of those initial plantings, the producer is expecting to have 16 hectares of avocados in the ground by Christmas.
While Harvest Moon isn't the first in Tasmania to try its hand at avocados - with North-West producer Avoland planting its first trees way back in 2010 - the uptake of the fruit by a large diverse producer could signal a sea-change for the fruit's future in the state.
And it's no wonder Harvest Moon and alike are trying to get in on the Australian avocado market. Based on data from national industry peak body Avocado Australia, the farmgate price for avocados grown across Australia reached $450 million in the 2020/21 financial year.
Also worth noting, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the vast majority of avocados produced in Australia are also bought and consumed within the country. Australia's appetite for smashed avo and alike took up the vast majority of the 87,546 tonnes of avocados produced last year, with the majority of exports heading to countries like Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
With so many producers in Australia, however, it's the timing of Tasmanian-grown avos that could be a major factor of its future success, according to Mr Kable.
"We're targeting a window in the early summer when traditionally they're imported from New Zealand. So, we're focusing on a time frame when no one else in Australia has them."
As it takes around four years to fruit an avocado tree, eager buyers will need to wait a little longer to pick up a Harvest Moon avocado.
"By this time next year, we're hoping to see fruit on the trees, and by the summer of 2023 we want to be picking them in some fashion," he said.
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