From Bananas to Berries - How farmers survive in the industrial farming system we rely on today
G’day everyone,
Incase you missed last weeks letter: I have now started a Substack Publication https://substack.
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Driving back from our camping trip this weekend, I watched people with backpacks spraying the blueberries under the plastic tunnels as we approached Coffs Harbour. I pulled over on the side of the road to check out how these berries were now being grown on the same hills that used to be covered in banana trees as far as the eye could see. Each blueberry bush was growing in a pot, much like those woven plastic tree bags you can buy from Bunnings. Along each row of blueberries, there were plastic pipes, which must be used not only to irrigate each plant but also to feed it the chemical nutrients it needs to survive. Between the rows, it was clear that some form of herbicide was used to keep the weeds from growing over the top of the bushes.
As I studied all of this with a keen eye, I was amazed at how much infrastructure was needed to grow these increasingly popular berries. Acres and acres of plastic and steel to cover the plants, all of which has a limited lifespan and will need to be replaced (plastic typically lasts only 5–10 years, depending on quality). Then there are the plastic pipes and pots used to grow the plants, all of which will eventually need replacing. It struck me that this must be the cheapest way to grow and harvest these berries—otherwise, why would they do it this way? Farmers aren’t going to invest that kind of money unless they can sell the berries at a profit over the long term.
I thought about it for the rest of the drive home: how is it possible, with all that infrastructure, to grow berries at the lowest price possible? Have you ever stopped and thought about how they got that way? Not just the farm, but the machines, the water, the energy, the chemicals—the hidden side of farming that keeps them cheap and perfect. Before I became a farmer, I would drive past farms like this and not even blink. It all looked perfectly fine back then. But after many years of farming organically and reading extensively about conventional farming and the true costs involved, I now look at the mountains around Coffs Harbour and ask myself: what’s really going on here, and what will all this look like in the future?
When you look at a punnet of berries in the supermarket and compare the price to organic berries, I wouldn’t be surprised if your jaw dropped. They look perfect, red, sweet—and they are much more affordable. But that price doesn’t reflect reality. It’s an illusion made possible by something almost invisible: cheap fossil fuels.
Big berry producers, like Driscoll’s, growing in the Mexican desert, rely on enormous infrastructure to force nature to do what it wouldn’t do naturally. Desalination plants turn seawater into fresh water. Pumps push it through miles of pipes. Greenhouses control temperature. Trucks move the fruit across borders—from countries with the cheapest labour to countries where the wealthier middle class are driving demand for these flavorful, sweet berries. Machines plant, prune, harvest, and package. Almost every step—water, energy, machinery, chemicals—runs on oil, gas, or electricity generated from fossil fuels.
This is how they make the costs “work”: by using cheap energy to replace natural systems. Water that should flow naturally through soil is pumped. Sunlight is supplemented or controlled. Pests are killed with chemicals instead of relying on biodiversity. Every part of the system is engineered to maximize yield and reduce labour costs—but all of it depends on energy that we currently take for granted.
And this is where the hidden fragility shows. If fossil fuels rise in price, if water becomes scarce, if energy grids fail, the entire system becomes expensive almost overnight. Greenhouses, desalination plants, and trucks cannot run without energy. The industrial system looks cheap only because it assumes endless, cheap energy.
Compare that to nature-aligned farming. It produces less, maybe the fruit looks imperfect, but it doesn’t rely on pumping the desert dry, it doesn’t burn fuel to make the sun shine, and it doesn’t demand constant chemical intervention. Its costs are real but sustainable. The system can last in perpetuity without collapsing if we realise the true costs now. And to be honest, maybe that means berries are a novelty, a special occasion, or maybe you decide it's better just to grow your own. We have one blueberry plant in our home garden and it produces an abundant amount of berries, its been given almost no attention other than the compost we gave it when we planted it, we have barely ever watered it and never had any insect damage, but yes, you do have to beat the birds.
At some point, industrial berries won't stack up. Energy prices spike, water runs short or is contaminated, soil erodes, chemicals lose effectiveness, infrastructure ages. Then the “cheap” berries suddenly cost more than they ever should have—because they were never truly cheap to begin with.
Cheap berries only exist while cheap energy exists. When it doesn’t, the price of forcing nature to obey becomes painfully obvious. When I look out over these hills, I see farmers trying their best to survive in a brutal and unforgiving industrial system—one predicated on extracting this earth’s resources until we reach a tipping point that forces humanity to reconsider our wacky belief that we can achieve infinite growth on a finite planet.
This is not the end of the story. Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter, where I’ll delve into the health impacts on your body and why you shouldn’t be eating punnets of berries for breakfast or packing them in your kids’ lunch boxes without knowing about the recently banned chemicals used to grow them—and the residue limits that were set many years ago, when Aussie families were consuming far less than we are today.
