Riverland growers turn to off-farm work as fruit fly restrictions persist

As Queensland fruit fly restrictions continue to bite, growers in South Australia's Riverland are being forced to seek off-farm work to make ends meet. For Jody Miltenoff, that means working as a project manager on a hotel development in Port Adelaide, hundreds of kilometres from his home.

Mr Miltenoff has left his son to run the family nursery business in Cambrai and orchards in Sunlands, but says managing his jujube business from afar is a challenge. While he enjoys project management, he prefers farm life.

"I'm lucky that I've got the construction industry to fall back on and supplement our income," Mr Miltenoff said.

The financial strain of fruit fly management has been exacerbated by extreme heatwaves last summer, which damaged most of his crop. Mr Miltenoff is not alone, with some growers nearing retirement and walking away from the industry altogether.

"I've heard of some apricot growers that are getting close to retirement and just walking away, just saying that it's too hard,"

Despite some positives, such as exporting dried jujubes to Tokyo, Mr Miltenoff says the loss of fresh fruit market access has been tough. Shipping to Adelaide requires costly cold treatment or fumigation, while sending produce to the east coast means poor returns.

"Growers in the Riverland that have been affected by fruit fly have been sending to the eastern states, so they flood that market and … the prices dropped quite severely,"

The Riverland is one of two internationally recognised Pest Free Areas (PFA) in Australia, providing growers with a trade advantage when exporting produce. However, since the Queensland fruit fly outbreak in late December 2020, the region has been subject to restrictions on produce movement and required treatments before sale.

State department of primary industries budget data shows $10 million of the $43 million allocated for fruit fly management in the last financial year was unspent due to fewer detections of the pest. In 2024-25, there were 7,794 Queensland fruit fly detections in South Australia, while there were 4,030 detections in 2025-26.

Citrus SA chair Mark Doecke says the reduction in fruit fly detections is a step in the right direction.

"Any money saving is good money saving, that's for sure,"

However, Mr Miltenoff believes the unused funds could have been better spent on adopting new technology to boost eradication efforts.

A department spokesperson says the allocation of funds is subject to approval through normal state budget processes.

Pathway to pest-free

Grower industry bodies Citrus SA and Summerfruit SA have organised meetings for growers and packers to discuss a pathway to releasing towns in Riverland west from the fruit fly exclusion zone. The area, known as Zone Two, includes Waikerie, Cadell, Holder, Sunlands and Taylorville, which have had consistently low detections of the pest in the past 12 months.

This follows the release of Swan Reach, known as Zone One, which was declared fruit fly free last November. Mr Doecke says the department has "taken too long" to lift restrictions.

"We started talking about getting some of these areas out three years ago,"

Mr Doecke estimates the citrus industry is losing around $20 million a year due to fruit fly restrictions.

"If we can get some of these areas out that will instil confidence back in the public and we can ask them to get behind us and keep that fight going,"

The process to reinstate Pest Free Area status is complicated and dependent on variables such as the time of year and the fruit fly life cycle. A department spokesperson says it requires "no further fruit fly detections for an agreed period of time and all protocol requirements are met".