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fresh fruit and vegetables
From Perth to the South-West, we are building on existing and creating new relationships with growers, transport companies and everyone in-between, to bring our agencies and customers a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables.
It’s no secret that the relentless cost of living crisis has long dictated how individuals spend their money, with the weekly food shopping budget being first hit in many cases. Healthy, balanced diets become increasingly unaffordable for Western Australian families on low to middle-range incomes in the current cost-of-living crisis.
In August last year we recognised the urgent need for the provision of healthy fruit and vegetables for Western Australian and moved to provide our customers with fresh fruit and vegetables.
Our free fruit and vegetable initiative has been hugely popular and successful but has meant that to keep up with demand, we have had to explore avenues we have not been able to explore previously – whether that be due to the high cost of transport or small budgets internally – we now have dedicated staff members for food sourcing to keep up with demand.
So it was very exciting to be invited to attend the annual Carnarvon Growers Association (CGA) field day, as we are currently not working the growers in Carnarvon region.
The weekend was full of fun, and a great opportunity to meet and greet the growers. There were many interesting presentations which talked about focusing on costs and improving the methods of production, distribution, transportation, and marketing of horticultural products, and so much more. It was also interesting to learn that Carnarvon produces 80 percent of Western Australia Fruit and Vegetables is just incredible. Such a valuable part of Australia!
Visits like these are essential – through engagement and partnership with the many growers in this region, along with pack shed programmes – events such as these allow us to build important relationships which will hopefully enable us to capture produce that would otherwise go to landfill, and provide quality, fresh produce to those that need it the most.
This, coupled with partnerships with transport companies like Team Global Express to move produce from Carnarvon to Perth, to support our Perth Airport branch along with supporting our regional branches – Peel, Kalgoorlie, Bunbury, Albany and Geraldton.
Just a few of the benefits of an affordable healthy diet include improved education outcomes for children, reduced future health costs and reduced social inequality.
In 2024 Foodbank WA provided 1,273,375 kgs of fruit and vegetables fruit and vegetables to our charity partners, schools and directly to households. This equates to 37% of our overall food distribution total.
For our agencies and customers, free fruit and vegetables mean that people no longer have to worry about the affordability of buying healthy food which is a key factor in people’s food choices.
The Emergency Relief & Food Assistance Hotline 1800 979 777 is open Monday to Friday 9.00am -5.00pm and is the easiest and quickest way to secure a referral to shop at Foodbank.