DESPITE not having to pull on the suit and tie as much, there are enough issues back on the farm to keep St George onion grower Andrew Moon busy.
Having chaired the national representative body, Onions Australia for the past three years, Mr Moon has seen his share of industry trials.
Now, fellow Queenslander Kees Versteeg has taken over the reins having been elected at the Onions Australia national conference held in Brisbane last month.
Mr Moon said the conference highlighted that while the industry is positive, there are some major challenges.
"It's the same issues that are facing most farmers," Mr Moon said.
Input costs, weather and markets were three of the hurdles making things tough for growers.
"It'd hard to tackle because a lot of it needs to be dealt with at a government level," he said.
"It's a headbutting-the-wall scenario in some instances, just trying to get ahead."
Mr Moon said his farm, which grows between 80 to 120 hectares of onions, has been through two of the driest growing seasons on record.
The dry makes it difficult to produce fuller, larger sized onions, while heatwaves and wind can further damage crops.
With the majority of onions being watered through centre pivot or trickle irrigation, pumping costs weigh heavy on the books.
Some late storms in 2013 helped top up storage for Mr Moon's farm but the outlook is not overly rosy.
"An extreme weather event is usually followed by an extreme weather event, that's the worry," he said.
Queensland onion growers started harvesting their first crops during the opening week of October.
Onions Australia (OA) expects the entire Queensland crop to be in by Christmas, ensuring fresh supply available till the end of January.
New OA chairman Mr Versteeg said onion growers in Queensland would historically start harvesting from August onwards but due to increased production volumes and improved storage technologies in the southern states, growers had been forced to shorten their onion season to prevent overlap.
"There are years that our new season Queensland onions are in high demand, especially when the southern onions have not been stored or handled correctly and are showing quality issues when coming out of storage," Mr Versteeg said.
"To ensure the highest quality, Queensland onion varieties are harvested by hand which adds a lot of cost to our business, as opposed to the southern onion varieties and soil conditions being more suitable to mechanical harvesting.
"With ever-increasing cost of labour, a lot of research and trials have been done to change over to mechanical harvesting but due the nature of our tropical onion varieties and soil conditions, too high of a percentage of the crop is being damaged."
The Moon name will continue to be involved in horticulture business decision making though.
As Mr Moon steps back from his representative role, his brother and business partner David Moon has been elected to the board of the newly formed Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited (HIAL).
