Most farmers and agriculture experts agree that the significant loss could increase fresh produce costs across Australia in the coming months. Some say prices for tomatoes could double or even triple.
Workers at Supa Seedlings nursery, which provides plants to 30 regional growers, noticed the wilting and dying plants between June 20 and June 25. As the problems were noticed in seedlings that had already been transplanted on farms, police were notified.
In all, about 4 million tomato seedlings were poisoned, as well as 2 million bell peppers and hundreds of thousands of melons and eggplant seedlings.
Police investigations found that a herbicide had been introduced into the nursery's irrigation system sometime in mid-June.
Townsville police acting Inspector Dave Miles said police were considering a range of motives. “It could be a grudge, it could be competition-based ... or it could be an act of vandalism,” Miles told reporters Wednesday.
He said the detectives would investigate possible links with three previous poisonings in Bowen since 2002. The owners of Supa Seedlings declined to comment to the media about the poisoning.
“I don't think it's just a local vandal,” Denise Kreymborg of the Bowen District Growers' Association said Thursday. “Obviously they knew what they were doing, as it was a pretty technical act they've done. But we don't want to contaminate the investigation by pointing fingers.”
The poisoning affected 350 hectares of production land with the potential to produce about 200 tons of fresh produce. Kreymborg estimated the growers' loss at 23.5 million dollars, or about 40 percent of the monthly profit they could have earned in September, when the seedlings would have been harvested for sale.
