Posted on: Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Exotic crops reviving Tasmania's economy
Bloomberg News Service
SMITHTON, Australia — When Al Hansen started diving for abalone in the icy waters between Tasmania and Antarctica, two pounds of the sea snails fetched 12 cents on world markets. Thirty years later, it goes for $26.
The ex-U.S. Marine now controls a third of Tasmania's wild abalone industry, worth $180 million a year, leading an export push that's given Australia's island state a quarter of the world market.
"We have something special here," Hansen said. "It's a unique climate that produces rare foods."
Tasmania is Australia's smallest and poorest state. It's also the coldest. And the climate has allowed it to build a reputation as a gourmet food bowl, providing jobs for those fleeing a declining mining industry.
Tasmanian harvests truffles as winter bites in June, making the world's finest edible fungi available in France's summer. Farmers, previously famed for their potatoes, now grow expensive spices like saffron and wasabi.
In 1967, mining of copper, tin and zinc made up 20 percent of the state economy. Now, mining makes up less than 1 percent, and the largest zinc miner, employs fewer than 100 people at its biggest Tasmanian operation.
In northwest Tasmania, terrier dogs sniff out this year's crop of black truffles, grown for the first time commercially outside France. Regarded as the world's finest edible fungi, truffles have traditionally only been grown in the oak woods of southern France, where pigs sniff them out.
"When they said they could farm truffles in Tasmania, I said if they did, I would come and dance around under the oak tree with them," said Tim Pak Poy, owner of exclusive Sydney restaurant, Claude's, which uses truffles for a $40 main course dish.
This southern winter, Duncan Garvey and Peter Cooper say they will get 110 pounds of "black gold" and are eyeing northern hemisphere markets where consumers are deprived of the delicacy during their summer. Truffles, shaved to add flavor to delicate dishes $3,200 per pound — almost double what each Tasmanian invested in the economy last year.
"We can produce truffles to be eaten fresh on Bastille Day for the first time," Garvey said.
In 1996 Terry and Nicky Noonan harvested their first saffron crop — an ancient spice worth more than its weight in gold, fetching about $15,500 per pound
It is the first time the spice, sold by the strand, has been grown successfully outside Europe. This year, the Noonans and other farmers around the remote and picturesque Glaziers Bay harvested 40 pounds and they say that will triple next year.
The Coles Myer Group Ltd., Australia's largest retailer, stocks Tasmanian saffron in 30 stores in Sydney and Melbourne and the Noonans are getting inquiries from restaurants in Europe.
Less than seven miles from one of Tasmania's most noted attractions, a beer-drinking pig, Ian Farqhuar is swapping three generations of potato farming for a crop he had not heard of two years ago — wasabi, whose roots are crushed and made into a fiery, green paste eaten with sushi.
Farqhuar's first wasabi crop will be harvested this year, and while it will be sold in Australian primarily, Japanese investors have visited his remote farm.
Abalone king Hansen works when most Tasmanians sleep. Tasmania harvests 2,730 tons a year of abalone, most of it sold in the Northern Hemisphere.
Because greenlip and brownlip abalone occur naturally at temperatures between about 53 and 71 degrees Fahrenheit, they will not survive in the tropical waters that cover most of Asia. Pollution and over fishing has depleted stocks in the region's north.
Tasmanian abalone exports grew 19 percent in 2000 to $350 million, according to government figures. That's almost as much as Australia exported in pearls.
