Tensions are simmering across the New South Wales mid-north coast.
On one side are dairy and beef farmers, and residents who moved to the region for the landscape and the lifestyle. On the other are blueberry farmers, whose holdings have expanded dramatically in the past few years.
When Raewyn Macky moved to Yarranbella, an idyllic valley in the hinterland behind Macksville, in 2008, she thought she had found her dream home and a place for an organic veggie garden overlooking rolling green hills.
“We had a most peaceful, beautiful view,” she says wistfully.
But in 2022 the dairy farm across the road was converted to blueberries. Now she looks at rolling fields of black netting, which cover thousands of blueberry plants.
Blueberries began replacing the banana farms around Coffs Harbour in the early 2000s. Now they are marching south, into the Nambucca Valley and Kempsey shires.
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Figures on how many hectares have been converted to this high-intensity form of horticulture in the last few years are hard to come by, but the expansion is highly visible throughout the region.
According to Southern Cross University research, between 2001 and 2016 blueberry farming expanded 400% – mainly around the Coffs Harbour region.
The Australian Horticultural Statistics handbook on the Berries Australia website says the tonnage of blueberries being produced in Australia jumped 40% between 2022 and 2024, with the mid-north coast the centre of production.
Land use conflicts
The proximity of so many blueberry farms next to established dairy and beef farms has led to land use conflicts that were perhaps unforeseen when the first blueberry farms arrived.
Beef producers are required to ensure that their meat is not contaminated by pesticide residues.
The Guardian visited one farm where the farmer has resorted to planting a buffer zone of bush, to avoid cattle eating grass potentially affected by spray drift from the blueberry farm next door.
In the Nambucca Valley shire there is no requirement to seek a development application from the council before grazing land is converted to high-intensity horticulture such as blueberry farming.
The NSW planning department recently rejected a proposal by the council to require development consent for new horticulture operations in rural zones.
The Greens MP Cate Faehrmann has written to the planning minister, Paul Scully, seeking an explanation.
“The council simply wants basic safeguards, like requiring a development application for large new blueberry farms, and setting minimum buffer distances between farms and people’s homes,” Faehrmann says.
“Instead, the minister’s department has dismissed this entirely reasonable request, ignoring years of community outcry.”
Department officials told a recent estimates inquiry the department vetoed the proposal because it had not been subject to sufficient consultation.
Councillor Luby Simson says the only objectors were the industry body, Berries Australia, and the local chapter of NSW Farmers, who were supported in a letter by the Nationals MP for the electorate of Oxley, Michael Kemp.
“All other intensive activities, like wineries, need a DA, but intensive horticulture does not,” Simson says.
The chief executive of Berries Australia, Rachel Mackenzie, says the proposal for DAs was not supported by the planning department or the state government, and that “validates the industry’s position”.
The NSW Farmers group, which represents all types of local producers, raised wide-ranging impacts of the proposal, inconsistencies with other government policies and the right to farm, as well as the costs associated with development applications.
Kemp says farmers are “already facing a lot of red tape and implementing another level of approvals would just add to that burden”.
Simson says councillors intend to try again in coming months to introduce controls on blueberry farms.
Concerns about pesticides
Beef farmers are not the only locals concerned about pesticides. Blueberries grown in subtropical regions require regular spraying – usually with dimethoate – to control fruit fly, and Macky worries about the possible effect on her organically grown vegetables and tank water.
The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority is now reviewing dimethoate and has announced a draft decision to extend the time between picking and spraying on blueberries from one to 14 days, though this has not yet come into effect.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) says it maintains “strong regulatory oversight in the Mid North Coast region, carrying out both proactive and reactive compliance inspections of horticultural operations on an ongoing basis to ensure proper environmental and pesticide use practices are followed”.
Since January 2022 there have been 11 penalty notices issued and 22 prevention notices in the Coffs Harbour council area and six penalty notices in the Nambucca Valley area. Not all of these were for blueberries.
The EPA also issues cleanup notices, cautions, warnings and advisory letters. There were eight cleanup notices and more than 70 other notices.
But the official actions are doing little to hose down tensions in the region. The simmering tensions between blueberry farmers and other residents sometimes boil over, with several residents reporting to the Guardian altercations at farm gates, legal threats and even threats of violence.
One longtime resident, who has a blueberry farm planted right beside her driveway and who asked not to be named, claims she was deliberately sprayed with dimethoate after she confronted her neighbour about the proximity of new plantings (the farm is not pictured in this article).
Faehrmann says residents feel powerless.
“Everyone I have spoken to [is] gobsmacked – at the scale and the intensity of it, and yet it is so unregulated,” she says.
“These are not radical environmentalists I am speaking to. They are just longtime residents, farms who just want to make sure that development is right for the area.”
The Nationals MP for Coffs Harbour, Gurmesh Singh, was chair of the Oz Group berries cooperative before entering parliament. He says the recent increase in berry farms had been concentrated in the Nambucca and Macksville regions, outside his electorate.
“Berries and other horticultural crops like bananas, avocados, macadamias, and other vegetables contribute billions to the Mid North Coast economy every year,” Singh says.
“I have always supported regulatory compliance in this industry and treat the limited correspondence I have received seriously.”
He blames Labor and the Greens for fomenting discontent in the region.
Kemp, who represents the neighbouring electorate, says he believes he is representing the majority of voters.
“When I get a complaint about pesticides in the waterways I ask for evidence. I’ve also sought more resources from the EPA,” he says.
Water quality and runoff
The industry expansion has also generated concerns in the local community about water quality in creeks and rivers around the blueberry farms.
Work by Southern Cross University in conjunction with Coffs Harbour council in 2018 found increases in nutrients of between 50 and 800 times recommended levels in Bucca Creek, located near blueberries, after heavy rain.
There are also concerns about whether the use of pesticides affects water quality.
Residues of neonicotinoids (such as imidacloprid) above the safe residue limits were found in prawn flesh and in water in Hearnes Lake, an important estuary near Solitary Islands Marine Park, in a 2022 study.
The EPA says it is “carrying out both proactive and reactive compliance inspections of horticultural operations on an ongoing basis to ensure proper environmental and pesticide use practices are followed”.
“We have recently commenced systematic water quality monitoring programs in the Nambucca Valley and Coffs Harbour local government areas and will provide the first round of results to the community in coming weeks,” a spokesperson says.
The EPA says it has been collecting water quality data focusing on pesticides in the Coffs Harbour area since 2021 as part of both compliance investigations and sampling projects, including the Hearnes Lake Wet Weather Monitoring Project.
“This monitoring showed the continued detection of pesticides in most waterways sampled, highlighting the need for ongoing monitoring in the region,” it says.
Monitoring in the Nambucca Valley by the EPA has detected three different pesticides in low levels in three creeks, suggesting water quality in the area is not being impacted by excessive amounts of pesticides.
Mackenzie says Blueberries Australia is actively supporting growers with intensive education, including one-on-one visits and webinars, to improve environmental stewardship.
“Furthermore, we are trialling innovative new pot designs specifically to capture farm run-off, demonstrating our deep commitment to environmental stewardship.”
