To be the best-value supplier of nutritionally excellent
food by linking key farmers with quality-conscious consumers through
use of a home delivery system that will optimise cleanliness, freshness,
quality and shelf life of produce.
The growing systems will utilise quality compost
and a rich lode of trace and minor minerals; with organic-approved
sprays. This ensures that our produce is nutritionally
excellent and very safe for you to enjoy!
Nu-Harvest’s vision statement
To change the mainstream of food production systems
so that they are based on remineralising and composting so as to
produce high quality food... to restore our health and to save our
soils!
Restoring the mineral balance
Australian soils have been intensively farmed year
after year without replacing minerals, except for the 12 "major
and minor elements". We use 73 minerals derived from rich volcanic
ash to fortify the plants and as well as trace minerals at rates 50 to 100 times more than conventional and other organic growers.
We know from our observations that the compost we
use helps to release nutrients such as phosphorous that are mostly
unavailable to the plant. It is this fact that helps to ensure that
the produce we supply you is, in fact, "mineral replenished "
fruit and vegies.
Nu-Harvest’s guarantee to you
Nu-Harvest guarantees that the
fruit and vegetables that we supply will be Genetically Modified
Organism (GMO) free. We are strongly against the philosophy of
GMOs and believe that the only successful way of growing quality,
vitamin - enriched food is by using organic-based systems and
avoiding systemic (i.e. moves into and through the plant) herbicides,
fungicides and insecticides.
Nu-Harvest guarantees that the
fruit and vegies we supply you will be as fresh as possible. Our
produce is grown on the Sunshine Coast, as well as in other areas,
and we will get it to you within a few days of being picked.
Nu-Harvest guarentees that all
our fruit and vegies will be Australian grown. Too many jobs are
being lost because Aussie farmers are being undermined by cheap
imports that are grown under hygienically-suspect conditions.
Nu-Harvest guarantees that if
you are not completely happy with the quality of the produce we
supply you, then we will give you your money back. We will ask
why, because we believe that in every area of life "close
enough is NOT good enough" and we want happy customers.
Here’s why Nu-Harvest is superior in quality,
nutrition and taste
We apply a rich lode of trace minerals to the
soils in our growing systems. These minerals are absorbed by the
plants and result in "mineral replenished " fruit and vegies
for our consumers.
We also use a substantial dose of quality compost for increasing
our soil humus levels (see below for explanation of QUALITY Compost),
so as to grow QUALITY FOOD . Research has shown that soil humus
- soil microbes (fungi & bacteria), break down organic matter,
producing a black solution (humus), which is necessary for building
vitamins in plants.
We use organic approved sprays, and are in the process of becoming organic certified.
We use quality compost (ISO9001 accredited ) as the major part
of our growing systems. Because of the extreme heat generated
(it takes a number of weeks for the full process), all parasitic
fungi, bacteria, hormones etc are destroyed, resulting in a truly
quality compost that is awesome at growing quality food.
Soil health issues we are addressing
Farmers who want to maintain their fruit and vegetable production
without rebuilding this key soil component, face increasing soil
problems, which are widely experienced in farming today. Some of
these key issues are root knot nematodes, soil diseases such as
Fusarium, pythium, rhizoctonia, phytophthora and verticillium wilt
to name the most common ones. These are all symptoms of soil imbalance
and are only rectified by reverting to rebuilding the right organic
matter fraction, rebuilding soil humus and using soil microbes so
that the balance is back in favour of the goodies rather than the
baddies. It is much like happens with our digestive system, though
because of the great soil health reserves, many of these problems
have only really surfaced in the last 20 years in intensive farming.
The herbicides, fungicides and insecticides used, have all conspired
against natural systems. Sooner or later it all catches up.
Farming within our sensitive eco-systems
The Australian community is very aware of the big environmental
issues that we are all facing – the Barrier Reef under threat,
the Murray Darling System becoming salinated, trees being over-cleared
leading to salting of large areas of agricultural land as well as
climate changes. One of the key challenges facing farmers is that
many have used up "the bank" of soil reserves which, for
many years has grown good crops when used in combination with chemical
fertilisers.
Continual, and increasing rates of nitrogen into the soil have
burnt up organic matter, resulting in an almost hydroponic-type
system, which is not growing GOOD FOOD and instead, is leaching
into our waterways.
‘A Nation that destroys its’ soils destroys itself’
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Research on the Nu-Harvest methods shows higher
food values
In 2004, the Nu-Harvest system (but
without the extra minerals) was tested in The Lockyer Valley on
a celery crop, harvested in July. On a "conventional"
farm, where the compost was used at half the rate of what we use,
the celery had a brix (sugar) reading of 4.8; on an organic farm
without the compost, the brix was 4.2. Many biological and organic
consultants/ agronomists believe that the higher the brix reading,
the better the total plant health and that it serves as an indicator
of food value for us. This is preliminary data and is an indicator
of what we believe our system can achieve. It must be remembered
that our conclusions are an extrapolation of this data and other
field observations.
Quality compost builds plant health and resists
insect attack
In a field trial at Bundaberg in 2002, a watermelon crop grown
on this same system (but without the extra minerals) yielded fruit
with brix levels 2 units higher than a nearby, conventionally grown
watermelon crop that harvested the same day. Another outstanding
result was that silverleaf whitefly, a serious sucking pest, was
not observed on the crop grown with quality compost, whereas the
other crop only 1 km distance away, without the compost, was severely
attacked. Data to confirm these observations will continue to be
collected and reported on this website.
Testing food value will be on-going
Nu-Harvest will continue to do similar
tests, (as well as nutrient analysis), to demonstrate the real food
value of crops grown on our system. We believe that we have really
taken the good parts of "organics" and the few beneficial
aspects of conventional farming and combined them into an excellent
package at the right price.
