KATE Sutherland’s interest in agriculture started at a young age but at that stage she had no idea where that passion would take her.
Mrs Sutherland has recently announced as the winner of the Fruit Growers Tasmania Award for Excellence for her work at Burlington Berries and her contribution to the industry.
While it is her name on the award, Mrs Sutherland said the success of Burlington Berries was the result of a team effort and she could not take all the credit.
Originally from the United Kingdom, Mrs Sutherland was born not far from London and grew up on her family’s dairy farm.
She studied agricultural science at the University of Wales did an honours degree with the plan of eventually getting involved with the family farm.
However, a backpacking trip to Australia with a friend changed all that.
In 1983 she ended up working on Kahncoban Station in foothills of the Snowy Mountains for a family who had a farm and racehorse stud.
Her husband-to-be Stewart Sutherland had the next-door farm, which was based right on the upper reaches of the Murray River.
What started as a holiday romance progressed and they eventually got married.
The Sutherland family have always been very innovative and started what was one of the country’s first grass seed production businesses at Mansfield.
Stewart and Kate have four daughters, Libby, Sophie, Charlotte and Emma who now all work in the family’s businesses.
A passion for plant breeding and developing new varieties saw them establish the well-known company Upper Murray Seeds.
The Sutherlands came to Tasmania looking for a drought-proof property to continue expand their seed production.
After searching for a few years, they managed to buy Burlington near Cressy, which at the time had been converted to a dairy operation.
Mrs Sutherland said it was a suggestion by a friend and experienced fruit grower from the United Kingdom, about the opportunities to grow soft fruits in Tasmania for international company Driscolls, that started them down the berry growing path.
The Sutherlands decided to give the berry production a go in partnership with their UK-based friends Marion and John Regan.
They originally started Burlington Berries in 2012 with 15ha of strawberries.
“Stewart and I didn’t know much about it, we were completely green,” Mrs Sutherland said.
“We were so naive when we went into this, but we trusted our partners. The good thing about it was we were able to use the counter seasonal production, so we brought all their knowledge over and even some of their staff came over to help train our staff.
“We also inherited all their computer systems and spread sheets, so it set us off in a really good way.”
Mrs Sutherland is the managing director of Burlington Berries.
After being involved with broadacre seed production, Mrs Sutherland said setting up an intensive soft fruit operation was a steep learning curve and they made plenty of mistakes in the early days.
The first strawberries were planted in the ground, which created problems with picking and drainage.
Two years later they bought the neighbouring farm Kilrae and moved the berry growing operation there.
It was then they also installed tabletop production for the strawberries, which increased the picking efficiency by 30 per cent.
The raspberry production also moved to a potted system, rather than having plants in the ground.
Mrs Sutherland said this eliminated the drainage issues and meant they have complete control over the crop nutrition.
“Apart from the wind and the temperature it means you can really manipulate your crop and give it a burst of fertiliser when it needs it depending on transpiration rates and growing conditions,” she said.
“Everyone thinks it’s about growing the plants and, in a way, that’s a given but it’s actually about managing your people profile.”
Mrs Sutherland said by manipulating the production across the season to even out fruit supply, it means they can ensure the workforce is as efficient as possible.
The business now has 68ha under production throughout the season and they can have up to 500 workers on farm.
Workers are employed through the Pacific Australia Labor Mobility scheme and come from countries including Tonga, Timor Leste the Solomon Island, Vanuatu and Samoa.
They use sequential planting, growing condition manipulation in the tunnels and cold storage to help manipulate the plants to produce fruit more evenly across the season.
The business has contining to grow and after establishing 60ha of production at Burlington they are now expanding production on another property between Cressy and Longford.
They have 34ha of strawberries, 27ha of raspberries and 7ha of blackberries.
The farm produces more than 2750 tonnes of fruit annually from 68ha.
This has increased from the 1500 tonnes they were producing off 45ha in 2019.
Tasmania’s berry industry has expanded significantly over the past few years as demand for fruit continues to grow.
However, Mrs Sutherland said last season had been a perfect storm for many berry growers in Tasmania.
She said a late season due to the very wet spring weather had meant a lot of the fruit came on to the market in January when prices are generally lower.
This combined with a long season in Victoria saw about 30 per cent more fruit on the market in January and February.
Mrs Sutherland said this had made many of the Tasmanian fruit growers stop and take stock.
“We’re in contact with all the major growers and we communicate regularly because we want to grow in a way that’s sustainable,” she said.
“You don’t want to flood the market because that can be a disaster, so you have to grow strategically in line with market demand.”
Innovation is still a big part of the operation at Burlington and Mrs Sutherland say are continuing to look at new techniques and technology which can improve production and efficiency.