Territorians have reacted angrily to a national directive requiring all banana trees in every backyard and farm across much of the Top End to immediately be destroyed.
All locally grown bananas will disappear from Darwin until 2017, under a disease eradication plan to rid Australia of the recently detected banana freckle fungal disease, found nowhere else in Australia other than the Northern Territory (NT).
The $26 million eradication scheme announced this week — designed to protect Australia’s $1 billion banana industry — will ruin NT’s $10m banana industry.
At Batchelor, organic banana grower Alan Petersen has already seen all of his trees destroyed by Primary Industry inspectors.
As one of the NT’s six commercial banana growers, Mr Petersen will be paid compensation for the loss of his 2ha of banana trees on his 65ha farm, Rum Jungle Organics, but the cheque will come too late for Mr Petersen and his wife, Jenny. “It was the bananas that made us viable,” he said yesterday.
“We’re selling up our little farm and moving to Queensland. While I understand the need for quarantine, this freckle fungi doesn’t cause any harm and really doesn’t threaten conventional growers because they spray fungicides once a week.”
NT Farmers chief executive Grant Fenton agreed. “Why wasn’t there more consultation and how can the government really make sure every householder in Darwin destroys every banana tree?” he said.
NT Agriculture Minister Willem van Holthe said the plan had been devised by the best scientists in Australia, and was free of political and trade considerations.
Source: The Australian