00:00For Virginia tomato grower Hoon Vo and his employees, it's been a difficult two months.
00:08I employ about 30 people, so when it happened I was quite nervous.
00:13The discovery of the tomato brown rugus fruit virus in South Australia in August
00:18put the industry in SA under serious threat.
00:21Three farms where the disease was found were shut down, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs.
00:27SA tomatoes were also banned from being sold in Western Australia and Queensland.
00:33In response, the state government has demanded the infected crops be destroyed to prevent the virus spreading.
00:39So while we still have only three properties that have been infected with this disease, eradication remains a very possible path.
00:48As part of that strategy, plants from South Australia are being tested for the virus,
00:53a process usually done interstate until now.
00:57We would hope to be able to turn those samples around in a matter of days rather than a matter of weeks,
01:01which we have seen interstate.
01:03Fortunately that then coincides with when the produce growing season is about to ramp up.
01:09It's expected local testing will allow tomato sales to resume to WA.
01:14That's welcome news to Hoon Vo, who is still hoping to send much of his crop to the West.
01:19So we're pretty much harvesting next week. This has come at a perfect time.
01:24For the tomato farms impacted by the virus, the future is much less clear.
01:29The South Australian government couldn't say exactly when they could start growing and selling their produce.
01:36We're still shut down. We're still losing tens of millions of dollars
01:40with no clear direction as to how we can get back into business.
01:44As one of the three farms shut down, Perfection Fresh has already shed 300 staff
01:50and says up to 200 more could go.
01:53Some of those people have been with us for a long time, but if we can't get back into business, we may never get back.
01:58The dire situation with harvest just around the corner.
Comments