Ms Elaine Houlihan:

I thank Senator Daly for the question. First, I will touch on getting more of our generation to eat fruit and vegetables. Of course we have a part to play in this. We need to highlight it more. Fantastic work is currently being done on this in national schools. Introducing it from the very bottom up is their approach. That is being done with Agri Aware, whose representatives, I saw on social media, were in a school yesterday highlighting the importance of fruit and vegetables. Work is being done on this but we need to do more as an organisation and I happily say that on record. It is a campaign we need to look into and is something we need to push. If we do a campaign, we will need the support of everybody, not just the growers, but also the support of consumers. Everybody has to be involved in this to push this sector more. We represent a number of young farmers in this sector. We even have a few members whose parents are currently in the sector and the younger members hope to take over. However, there are a few issues. Access to land is one of the biggest things for a young farmer currently. As we see, there is high demand for land around the place. It is very hard, especially if you are approaching somebody who you want to get into horticulture. They may not find the idea overly appealing because it is a smaller sector even though it is the fourth largest sector we have as I said in the opening statement.

I will pass over to Dr. Hanrahan about our key asks as he is the chair of our agricultural affairs committee and it will have discussed this at length.