In Western Australia more than one million hectares of land is affected by salt. But it's a problem that has been turned into an advantage by one farm which is growing salt-tolerant plants for restaurants across Australia.
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00:00 David Thompson grows sheep and wheat near Katanning, about 300 kilometres south east
00:07 of Perth in Western Australia. But like many wheat belt farmers, he's had to face growing
00:12 salinity in his soil.
00:16 Well salt kills everything in its path, it's a really silent killer. It spreads and kills
00:20 everything in its way, whether it's natural vegetation or introduced grasses and cropping.
00:27 And it's continuing to spread. It affects more than one million hectares in Western
00:31 Australia.
00:32 The advice has been to put a fence up and plant trees in the salt areas and then try
00:37 and buy more land that's not affected by salt. But it's spreading at about 20,000 hectares
00:42 a year so it's very hard to escape it.
00:46 But a random question prompted a new farming and business opportunity.
00:50 Well we were supplying restaurants with our dry aged mutton and we had a chef ring me
00:54 and said have you got any saltbush? So I went and picked some saltbush and sent it to his
00:59 restaurant.
01:00 Saltbush grows in the tough salty conditions.
01:04 David soon discovered there were other salt tolerant plants like sea kiss, sandfire, carkella,
01:10 heartleaf ice plant and sea purslane.
01:16 He began growing them and expanded to build a greenhouse to increase production.
01:22 David and his wife Sue say the venture value adds to their merino business.
01:27 That looks beautiful. This is actually my favourite one that I probably use the most
01:32 in the kitchen.
01:35 What started as a 500 gram order for one restaurant has turned into a massive enterprise with
01:40 David and Sue's product now being shipped right across Australia.
01:47 Melissa Palinkis is one of Western Australia's top chefs and regularly serves the salty morsels
01:52 at her New York style deli in Fremantle.
01:54 I'd start pickling things and using those as something to finish with. Now we use them
01:59 as greens. We will just stir fry them.
02:01 So we've got warrable greens, we have sea blight, sea purslane, we've got sandfire and
02:12 we have ice plant.
02:16 They love it. The customers like it because they're getting something different. Especially
02:19 when you do the little stir fry greens, they're excited to try something different and I think
02:24 from that perspective, real avid foodies will go out and if they see something like that
02:29 on the menu, they'll go for it because they want to know what it tastes like.
02:33 We're always looking for the next best thing. We're always looking for another ingredient
02:37 to test ourselves and push ourselves with.
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