Winery workers and grape growers in the same boat

Vanguard April 2014 p. 6
Ned K.

                                                 

In February this year angry grape growers from the Riverland wine and vineyard area of South Australia descended on the city of Adelaidecomplete with vineyard tractors and a tip truck full of grapes. They stopped at the state Parliament House where they received a lot of attention from the public and local constabulary when they started tipping the grapes on to the road to symbolise that the grapes they were growing could not be sold at all or only at below the cost of production prices.

Large wineries are importing grape juice from vineyards in Argentina and Chile rather than buying from local growers and/or squeezing down the price paid to growers as low as $80 a tonne. It costs on average $240 a tonne to produce the grapes.

Consequently, growers are on the bones of their backside. Many of the approximately 1500 small producers have worked and lived in the Riverland for two or more generations. They are an important part of the Riverland community. Their demise will have a negative impact on towns like Berri, Waikerie, Renmark and further up the Murray in places like Mildura.

Their desperation showed as they assembled on the steps of Parliament House. An angrier group of people on Parliament House steps has not been seen for a long time. They are looking for answers and chose Parliament House steps as a destination in the hope that with a state election in March this year, some politicians may take notice.

They have formed their own association, the Riverland Grape Growers Association, complete with web site.

Some  of the grape growers and vineyard workers have traditionally tried for work in the wineries in the Riverland to supplement their incomes. However the winery workers are on the wrong end of decisions also made by the same wineries who import the grape juice from overseas. Once the grape juice arrives, it is processed in to wine. However instead of being bottled in the Riverland wineries, there is an increasing trend for it to be transported to ports here and pumped in to huge bladders in ships bound for Europe. Once in Europe, the wine is transported to bottling halls for bottling ready for retail sale to the people of Europe.

The big wineries, mostly foreign owned corporations, have worked out that it is more profitable to bottle the wine overseas than in local wineries. Over time, this has caused hundreds of lost jobs in the wineries across Australia, adding to the stress for local communities.

When  Is An Australian Wine Australian Made?

So when you open that bottle of wine with a label saying it is made somewhere in Australia, have a think about it. It may in fact be from a vineyard in South America and it may not even be bottled at the winery claiming to have “produced” it. Grape juice is cheaper from South America because of exploitation of cheap labour, often the labour of displaced peasants from their land which they too have farmed for generations.

No wonder there were both grape growers and winery workers at the protest on Parliament House steps.

“Free trade” of the international capital market is teaching the people who are their enemies and who are their friends.