Flower Farming and Agritourism

In this episode of the Real P3 podcast, host Philip interviews David Robert Thomson from Tasmania, Australia, delving deep into the intricacies of farming and sustainable agricultural practices. David, a seasoned farmer specializing in wholesale flower bulbs, shares his expertise in growing tulips, lilies, and daffodils, along with his experiences in agritourism and international agricultural insights.

Key Learnings:

Flower Farming:
·       Tasmania’s Climate:  David explains how Tasmania’s mild climate allows for year-round farming, presenting unique opportunities compared to colder regions.
·       Growing Challenges: The conversation highlights the challenges of growing tulips in Tasmania’s slightly warmer winters versus more optimal regions like the Netherlands.
Agritourism:
·       Public Engagement: David shares how his family opened their farm to the public 35 years ago, leading to a successful agritourism venture that attracts thousands of visitors annually.
·       Visual Appeal: Emphasizes the beauty and attraction of large flower fields and the significant growth of the agritourism sector over the years.
  Sustainable Farming Practices:
·       Quarantine Standards: Discussion on the importance of Australia’s quarantine standards, which help maintain the quality and competitiveness of local flower bulbs by limiting foreign competition.
·       Soil Health and Resilience: David’s journey into soil health, influenced by mentorship from experts like Bill Kotsching, and the transition towards regenerative agriculture.
·       Economic Benefits: How agritourism and sustainable practices contribute to the economic stability and future potential of the farm.

Tune into the Real P3 podcast for an engaging conversation with David Robert Thomson about flower farming, agritourism, and sustainable agricultural practices in Tasmania, with a unique perspective on global farming experiences. Don’t forget to leave reviews and ratings and stay connected for more enlightening episodes.

Connect with David:
Facebook: @david.roberts.thomson
X: @thomson_roberts

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www.thesunswinegroup.com

Transcript

Casey
 0:00:00
 Welcome to the Real P3 Podcast. Every Monday, join the Unstoppable team as we explore powerful stories of resilience and inspiration from the leaders shaping our industry. Tune in to start your week with motivation and insights that empower you to be unstoppable in life and business.

Philip
 0:00:25
 Hi, everyone. So today I'm with a really, really cool guest, David Robert Thomas from Australia, Tasmania, Australia.

Philip
 0:00:36
 Dave, how are you doing? Yeah, good.

13
 0:00:38
 Yeah, thanks.

Philip
 0:00:39
 Thanks for a great start.

Philip
 0:00:40
 You will have forced me. I know we've, every podcast comes up with like people don't know what to call me. We've had a discussion already on this, like, multi-personality disorder. Yeah, so that's all good. So Dave, you're into some general farming up in Tasmania, wholesale sort of flowers, flower bulbs, most known and famous for you guys, tulips.

Philip
 0:01:05
 So we'll go back to this. I'm just going to give a quick run through it. What was really interesting is the flower business, the flower bulb mail order business, things that really strike an interest with me and I think the general listener. And then definitely agritourism.

philip
 0:01:16
 Do you want to talk us through a little bit about what you guys do?

Robert
 0:01:19
 Yeah, yeah.

Robert
 0:01:20
 Thanks, Boaz. We've got a really diverse business and Tasmania is a really mild climate. So we're growing all year round, even through winter down there, unlike somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, everything stops. Where we are continuing to grow all year round, it's a very mild climate and that makes that all possible. So we're growing the wholesale flower bulbs, which is what we're most well known for.

philip
 0:01:49
 So that's tulips, lilliums, Dutch iris, hyacinths, a few daffodils, a few ornamental alliums and that's our main bulb cropping area which is around 20 hectares.

Robert
 0:02:04
 So just on the tulips, I was quite surprised to hear tulip farming in Australia. Like for me, that's a Netherlands or a Dutch sort of crop. And you find that the weather and everything there in Tasmania is suitable for them, obviously.

philip
 0:02:15
 Yeah, that's right. So Tasmania is a lot cooler than a lot of places in Australia, being so far south, where we would like it actually to be a bit cooler during the winter, our sort of daytime average temperature is like 10 or 11 degrees, 11, maybe 11 or 12. And in Holland, it's probably more like 5 or 6. The cold, tulips love the cold in winter. All right. So just for the listeners here, we're actually sitting in an airport. We're doing a global focus program with Nuffield. And so we're recording this podcast

philip
 0:02:45
 because this program is pretty intense. And so you may find some breaks. We are going to try and go back to where we left off when we hear an announcement. So we were talking about sort of the weather, the climate that the tulips like.

Philip
 0:02:56
 So five, six degrees in Holland, where you guys are sitting around 12.

philip
 0:03:00
 So we're not quite cold enough to get the best growth out of the tulips. That's when the tulips convert all their energy in the bulb to sugars to grow in the springtime. So a bit like a potato, it's full of starch, but yeah, the winter cold converts those starches to sugars and gives it the energy to sort of grow really rapidly in springtime.

Philip
 0:03:23
 So do you find your guys' yields are better? Are you chasing yield or are you just chasing bloom?

philip
 0:03:27
 Like, I don't know anything about the crop. Yeah, so for us, so Australia's protected by quarantine. You can't just import a Dutch bulb or a New Zealand bulb and just sell it in Australia. Australia's quarantine standards are like a protection and that's good for us because we probably couldn't compete with say the New Zealanders. They have a better climate, they're the colder and they're way down the bottom of the South Isle, they just

philip
 0:03:52
 never get warmed up so and that's actually quite good for tulips. They can give an artificial warming like in a bulb store in the summertime they'll give it, the bulbs also need that, but they'll just get that artificially. And yeah, South Island, New Zealand's probably the best place in the world to grow chaff.

Philip
 0:04:07
 Oh, cool, man, cool. And then agritourism, this is something I'm hearing about a lot. A lot of people opening their farms up. We had a really cool podcast recording with Kendra Hall with the Reverberate PR about sort of public exposure

Philip
 0:04:20
 and transparency to what we do on farm. And agritourism obviously fits really well into that. As livestock farmers, it's scary. You saw the biosecurity on some of the farms here. But that's a cool topic. And how do you guys think that's influenced your business?

Philip
 0:04:32
 And has that been a game changer for you guys?

philip
 0:04:35
 Yeah, we've been doing it like nearly all my life. So my parents started the tulips over 35 years ago, and it was so unusual back then. Like no one in Tasmania was growing tulips at scale. And we had to make a choice pretty soon whether or not we were going to build big fences to keep people out or we invite the men in my family are good hosts.

philip
 0:04:54
 So we started charging people and come onto farm and that's grown to the last few years we've been sitting plateaued about 20,000 people a year overall. We're in a pretty under populated area. Tasmania's only got between 500 and 600,000 people. But we're starting to find that people will make a four hour or an eight hour return journey from Hobart

philip
 0:05:20
 just for the day to come and see our farm. Now that's sort of in the last three or four years, that's a new thing. And that was a very rare thing four years ago. And now it's like, it's really taking off.

Philip
 0:05:30
 What's this sort of incentive? Like do the people get to pick the flowers and take flowers home?

philip
 0:05:34
 Is it just a day out of town? Yeah, I think there's a couple of attractions. Really, the main thing is just like the color, like standing in a field of tulips, the intensity of color is...

Robert
 0:05:45
 Is what?

11
 0:05:46
 Yeah.

Philip
 0:05:47
 That was such a cool thing we did with Nile McCann. We had that chat and the whole thing was you don't have to wait for the situations to be perfect to do something. Like this podcast recording and co-hosting with Casey came up as an opportunity. It's like, keep going. You don't need the mic, you don't need the

philip
 0:06:03
 earphones, you don't need the whatever, just get up and do it. Yeah, what people get when they come to the farm, the major thing by far is this like fields of colour, like anywhere for three, sometimes we have like up to seven hectares of tulips here, depending where they're planted, if they can walk to them or not. And you just standing in intense colour like that, it is very special. I really get that it's a very calming thing to do. We call it colour therapy. Colour therapy, that's cool, yeah. And so people really just enjoy

philip
 0:06:37
 that. We also do a big indoor display and things like that, like lots of flowering tulips, lots of other stuff going on there, big flower arrangements, a shop and all of that, a cafe. Like that, that we sort of, that's a pop-up shop and a pop-up cafe that we run just for that period. So it's not really set up all year round, we actually pull it up and down and use those spaces for other production in the rest of the year. And they also just get to be on a farm.

philip
 0:07:03
 Like in Australia, a lot of the city people, even people in town, they just don't get an opportunity to walk onto a farm. So we don't really try to hide, we tidy up a little bit, but we don't, you know, like they're walking past the spray tractor. We just put a rope around it, you know, so we don't try to sugarcoat it too much. Like, and then we invite questions about our production and things through that.

philip
 0:07:27
 You know, it is a little harder with livestock and stuff and tulips, you know, no one cares if a tulip's head gets cut off.

Robert
 0:07:33
 Cool.

Philip
 0:07:34
 So agritourism, again, yeah, really interesting. I think people need to be really aware of it. It's a great space for people from the cities to go out. I was on sort of Black Fox Farm in Canada, and they have the same, I don't know the scale of it, but guys go and they pay like, I don't know, $20 Canadian dollars or $40 Canadian dollars.

Philip
 0:07:53
 They get a brown paper bag. They can walk around the whole farm, pick flowers to their heart's content, and they've got this Saskatchewan or Saskatoon berry or something that they got, so people can fill their bags up with veggies and fruit and berries and flowers and they walk out and it's like a one price bag and they love it.

Philip
 0:08:08
 So it's really popular and they also make gin. So there's always like gin tasting and they make a really smart product.

philip
 0:08:14
 No guesses of what you told your bank.

Philip
 0:08:16
 And then you've got a real cool interest in soil health and I was sort of semi part of a conversation you're having with one of our other scholars. And you mentioned the word soil health resilience and resilience is a topic that I jump onto everything and resilience isn't everything.

Philip
 0:08:33
 And when you said soil health resilience or soil resilience, I was like, you know, the topic is so broad and there's another one. So that's the sustainability of agriculture for future generations. Would you open that one up a bit?

philip
 0:08:45
 I guess when I came back to the farm, so I had about 10 years trying very hard not to be a farmer and ended up being back at the farm and realising that it was a really interesting profession. The ability, it suited my personality, I loved being a jack of all trades and I felt other professions were pigeonholing me into something I wasn't really great at. When I got back there though, my family through the generations, I just wasn't quite comfortable with how we were farming

philip
 0:09:16
 when I got back. It just didn't feel like... Some of the crops we grow are pretty hard on the soil, especially something like a lillium bowl, and that it's a bit like potato harvest, a lot of winter harvests, a lot of compaction and issues. And I was just like, having stepped away from the farm and coming back, I just wasn't convinced

philip
 0:09:36
 that it was going to be easier. The farming is going to be easier as I started getting more involved. And I started looking to some mentors in the soil space in Tasmania, Bill Kotsching was one of them, and he had done studies on quality of the soil versus yield in potatoes. And so, I was finding the correlation between soil quality and yield. And at the end of the day, I was like, well, if we're not looking at soil quality, what are we doing?

Philip
 0:10:03
 You can't just throw more and more fertilizer at a brook.

philip
 0:10:05
 That's right. And so on that...

9
 0:10:07
 It's fine. It gives it some color.

philip
 0:10:09
 Yeah.

8
 0:10:10
 It's the outside.

Philip
 0:10:11
 Cool.

Robert
 0:10:12
 So we're talking about soil health and the sustainability on the soil. And again, yeah, what are we doing if we're not looking at soil health? And that sent me down a rabbit hole that I'm still in, but I guess perhaps I was into that soil health, which has turned into regenerative agriculture in a way. I've been looking at that for a decade now. It's really endlessly fascinating. I've met a lot of amazing people through that. We're seeing our soils by treating them better. We're finding we're getting on the paddocks better, our

philip
 0:10:53
 crops are more consistent. We've also been able to drop out nearly all insecticides and nearly all fungicides. We're still pretty heavily relying on herbicides and I suspect we will be for a long time. But soil health plus more focus on nutrition, especially on the microbes and trace elements and times nutrition is like, yeah, being, it's, yeah, we're sort of, we're nowhere near where I want to be, but we're getting there and it's good.

Robert
 0:11:22
 And the sort of motive for that is not just yield. I mean, that's the motive for not, right? Everyone needs an incentive to do something more yield, more loot. But generally we spoke about it. It's, you want your kids to farm, you want your grandkids to farm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

philip
 0:11:33
 I really do believe that, uh, as a multi-generation, if I'm the one who mines our asset, then you mines it, degrades it, whatever you want to call it, then my kids just won't come back. They're gonna see opportunities elsewhere. But if they can see that our farm is on the rise, organic matters improving, the quality of our crops are good, then they're gonna start seeing opportunities and then they can do whatever they want, but I want them

philip
 0:12:03
 to at least have the option. And in the meantime, I want to feel proud about the type of farming that I practice. So I feel like that is my focus and in a multi-generational sort of, our farm is kind of special, we're not moving it, it's a very unique property. And so we want to try and keep a hold of it into the future. Perfect.

Philip
 0:12:27
 So we're going to move over to what we're doing now. We're in Jakarta, we're in Indonesia. Before we move on to that, what is the farm's name? How do people find you?

philip
 0:12:35
 So, the business name is Van Demon Quality Bulbs, but it's probably a little easier to find it as Table Tape Tulip Farm. And in Northwest Tasmania, easy to find in Google Maps and things like that too.

Philip
 0:12:52
 And you guys heard it, they don't mind if a few flower heads go missing, so make sure to visit. Okay, so Indonesia, Jakarta, let's chat through that. So we're on this Global Focus Program, we all met there, it was 11 of us, there is 11 of us to start off with. Indonesia's just blown me away.

philip
 0:13:08
 Yeah.

Robert
 0:13:09
 Like population, 270 million people, which I had no idea about, it's just bustling, it's busy. Part of this program is we're visiting different agricultural sectors. We've had the most amazing host who I've also recorded a podcast with Greg Pankos who has a resort as well in Lampung. So definitely look up Greg. I'm sure he would love some more visitors coming out to his resort in Lampung. And Dave, let's talk through that a little bit. How do we want to have this chat? Do we talk about Indonesia in general? Do we talk about

philip
 0:13:35
 what we've seen? Yeah, perhaps Indonesia in general to begin with. It's a big, population-wise, it's a huge country and parts of it are very well developed. Not perhaps the water and road infrastructure, well some of it's good, but for the number of people, it's a bustling Asian city. It's mind-blowing. But here we are sitting in this very modern airport that's very well appointed and all

philip
 0:14:00
 the hotels and things like that. There's absolutely no... You can get the taste, as we did last night, of how the local locals live. And there's a real disparity between the wealthiest people and poorer people. Definite class divide, but a massive class divide. Yeah, yeah. And so we have been traveling around some very large farms, and those farms, it feels like there's no obstacle in their way to complete, just expand and expand and

Robert
 0:14:28
 buy up more and more land. Because the farming, once you get to a certain scale, it's quite profitable, it seems. So they have low labor costs, and then they've got relatively low land costs. So they're just throwing thousands of people at jobs.

Philip
 0:14:49
 We were on a farm yesterday, which employed 30,000 people. The scale was massive, the factory was massive, the farm was next level. And one thing I've noticed is they're buying up farms from sort of smaller subsistence farmers. And it was something that I mentioned because I think we see it, you're pushing those populations into the cities.

Philip
 0:15:08
 The more land you buy, the more pressure you put on your cities. And you certainly see it. I mean, when you say bustling, I don't know if there's a better word for bustling. Because that doesn't sleep and there's scooters and bikes and cars and people.

philip
 0:15:20
 And yeah, yeah, yeah.

Philip
 0:15:21
 So we visited prawn farms and I'm going to make a comment on that. Those buggers, they're buying it at $3 a kilo for a hundred prawns. I mean, it's like, come on guys, the restaurants, what are we paying for prawns? So definite opportunity to get into the prawn market and prawn business.

philip
 0:15:35
 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robert
 0:15:36
 Then we've gone on to feed lots, seafood, factories, paper processing. We really interesting one from those how they harvest sort of from the rubber trees and process and make the latex. Yeah. So all really interesting stuff. Something that shone through for me was the people.

5
 0:15:50
 Yeah.

Philip
 0:15:51
 Absolutely blown away by how friendly they are and starved of sort of European influence, which is a surprise in today's age.

philip
 0:15:57
 We're like the rock stars really. Yeah.

Philip
 0:16:00
 Yeah. This is going to be a fun one. Can we talk about the Irishman? The reaction the girls get? He's a good looking guy. It's been amazing, but really concerning at the same time, like you've got a beautiful country, it's bustling, it's growing, it's a third world, it's got the 17th largest economy in the world. It's definitely happening, but it's not food secure. And when you think of an island or a country which has 270 million people that

Philip
 0:16:30
 have to import 12 million tons of maize a year, it kind of gives you like a little bit of a check, like what's happening with the world, where are we going?

philip
 0:16:38
 I think it's this globalised economy that we've been working in for a long time. It is completely reasonable on one level that Australia produces this extra wheat for these guys to make their mee goreng noodles or whatever, that's a staple food for them. But they don't produce any wheat at all. But it's their number one take-home meal, I think, is that instant noodle kind of thing, which is all wheat. So in some ways, while things are good, there's no problem. It's like Australia's happy to trade. We've got a lot of land and there's not a lot of people.

philip
 0:17:16
 And so we've gone down a different route of efficiency in Australia, like big farms, big equipment, low number of people. Here, it sort of feels like the dead opposite. Yeah, so many people that, you know, you sort of look at the minimum wage here and you're like, oh my goodness, can you remember the figures? It's like, was it a hundred bucks? I mean, I can't remember. It was a bit more than that. I got a phone in the US a month ago. Anyway, it's not a lot of money, but they can still have a pretty good life it seems here to some degree.

philip
 0:17:49
 I think it gets tricky when health care comes into it, when you start getting... So, people need a job. It's kind of like, weird thing isn't it? Like, imagine if you had a big campaign, you'd have to raise the minimum wage by 20%.

5
 0:18:05
 What would happen?

philip
 0:18:07
 Like, all these big companies would be automatically...

Philip
 0:18:09
 Yeah, that's exactly where we are.

Philip
 0:18:11
 Yeah.

philip
 0:18:12
 Yeah, one of the things we found really amazing is that compared to Australia at least, there is just no problem with just throwing another person at a problem. I found it fascinating, like Greg, who's an Australian operating in Indonesia, he's being forced to start a new dairy, which is another story. And he budgeted, like in Australia, I think they're a 50 cow dairy, is that right? Yeah, it's not big. And in Australia, that would be a one or one and a half person job or something like that to manage a dairy such as that.

philip
 0:18:42
 Over here, they're budgeting for 18 people. And so those 18 people will, they'll do everything and it will cost the same amount as in Australia for the wages as it would, you know. There's no limit to the number of staff you can face. Yeah, there's no limit. But it's encouraged though because the more people you hire, the more, I mean, these people need jobs, the communities need the income. Yeah, that's right. And if you're a, you know, reasonably kind employer and look after the staff, then people will stick around and be very loyal.

Robert
 0:19:11
 Staff retention came through a lot, eh? There's a lot of companies where people have been at 25, 30 years, more than just the feedlot business we went to. It was the same with the pineapple farm, like big time on staff retention, which is really good. Yeah. So they're obviously looking after people and it's really fascinating how it all works. There are people within those communities who are trying to climb the ladder, but there's also a big base that are just caught up with the minimum wage.

Philip
 0:19:39
 We cannot talk about Greg when he sat down with one of his business partners to discuss the dairy and bang out the cash flow. Then they spoke about a potential, I think, goat, milking goat dairy. And then at Buffalo, the guy was like so into just pushing this cash flow together. Greg mentioned to the guy, let's do a budget for a rabbit dairy.

philip
 0:19:57
 And the guy was absolutely clueless that Greg was pulling his leg and started punching in rabbit dairy. How many rabbits were we eating?

Philip
 0:20:05
 A thousand.

Robert
 0:20:06
 A hundred thousand.

Philip
 0:20:07
 A hundred thousand at 15 mls a day. So that was a brilliant story. We're going to start wrapping this up. Any comments on your side about Indonesia in general?

philip
 0:20:16
 I think there's a lot of opportunities here, but you have to be here. That was something that really came across from Greg. It's a fascinating place. They're not highly interested in sustainability currently, and there are a few question marks on some of the longevity of these quite well-established businesses,

philip
 0:20:35
 whether or not they're going to hit some big hurdles in the next little while. Yeah, I think it's a fascinating place and just one of the best visits I've experienced.

Philip
 0:20:46
 We've only had one podcast, not a lot, but I was a friend of mine from school who's got a brain injury and our language

Robert
 0:20:53
 was atrocious.

philip
 0:20:54
 He's like, you boys need to do this again, like don't let go.

Philip
 0:21:00
 Dave, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us today about what you guys do in Tasmania, about sharing a bit of the stories of Indonesia and just a comment to the general sort of listener, if you haven't been to Indonesia, highly, highly recommended. Great people, great culture. Friendly, safe, and just an experience of a lifetime.

Robert
 0:21:19
 Yeah, we just thoroughly love this place. Like, really want to come back. Like, really want to come back. Yeah, thanks guys.