Yandina family find new market

Daughter AnnMarie Lawson has spent the past two months juicing excess lemons and limes on her parents' property after low returns forced the family to hold onto their fruit.

"Dad has been working towards this for the past three years. He got the juicing machine built and went through the certification process, and has handed it over to me," AnnMarie said.

"With the help of our shed manager John, we've managed to juice about 500 litres of citrus last week alone, which we will go on to sell at the Yandina Markets and on our farm through an honesty box stall.

"The majority of the juice is frozen at the moment because there was no market for our limes. We weren't even getting $5 for a 10kg box, so it's not even worth sending them to market, and we'd have to throw them away otherwise."

AnnMarie's parents Kelvin and June Yarrow abandoned their sugarcane crop in 2006 in order to plant Tahitian lime and Eureka lemon trees after the Moreton Mill in Nambour closed its doors in 2003, leaving producers little other choice.

"My Dad has been farming this property for the past 50 years, and when he first started out he was growing beans and pineapples and moved into sugarcane, but all our land is classified as rural farming, so my parents couldn't sell it for development when the mill shut down, so he had to look at growing other things."

The small citrus plantation sits among thousands of lychee and banana trees, which Ferntree Valley also processes for the Brisbane and Sydney market.

AnnMarie said she has been quite chuffed with the response she has received from sales of her lemon and lime juices, which are now also being stocked at the local butchery.

"There's no Australian-grown and produced product out there on the market - everything's imported - and we want people to be aware that we can produce this great product locally.

"It's sad for us to see a high level of imports when so much product is going to waste in our own country."

AnnMarie said many consumers were unaware of the large percentage of citrus crops which had been dumped due to the weak market.

"We can grow beautiful fruit here, and people aren't aware that so much is being imported or the impact that has on the Australian farmer.

"Our juice is 100 per cent natural with no added sugar and is great for so many things."

Working alongside her parents, AnnMarie, along with her husband and five young children, is keen to make the citrus juice operation prosper.

"Dad isn't a big talker, but the amount of knowledge he has about the farm is incredible, and I'm so proud of them for what they've achieved on the farm – there's been a great deal of emotional and financial investment up to this point.

"He nearly threw in the towel at the start of the year, but John and I both told him we'd come too far to give up now."