Help feed the nation and pick some fruit
With Covid-19 threatening to impact the nation's summer food crops because of difficulties finding seasonal workers, I'd like to share my experience as a young person growing up in the country who threw himself into fruit picking from the age of 15. My goal is to start a conversation about the opportunities for young people who are on holidays or without work at the moment, to get out and do something which will benefit themselves and the nation. My family settled in the Goulburn Valley, the food bowl of Victoria, Australia. Every year at harvest time, local orchardist, Santo Varapodio would be on the local news lamenting the fact that the Goulburn Valley had high levels of unemployment and yet local fruit growers struggled to find enough pickers. This problem has not gone away, so I’d like to encourage more people to get out and give it a go as I did 37 years ago. In 1982, I couldn’t wait till I turned 15, the legal working age so that I could go and earn a few extra