Australian farmers have funded Woolworths' latest Jamie's Garden campaign featuring celebrity chef Jamie Oliver according to Ausveg the body representing Australian vegetable growers.
Farmers were asked to contribute 40 cents a crate on their produce to pay for a major advertising campaign that carries his endorsement, The Guardian reports.
This contribution was asked on top of a marketing contribution of between 2.5-5 per cent, which growers already pay Woolworths, the CEO of Ausveg Richard Mulcahy claims in a letter he sent Mr Oliver to alert him to the fee.
In the letter Mulcahy explains that Ausveg's gripe isn't with Oliver, however Mulcahy calls upon the celebrity chef to raise the issue with the supermarket chain so that they refund the levy to the farmers.
Mulcahy writes, “For many, the additional contributions amount to tens-of-thousands, if not hundreds-of-thousands of extra dollars - a significant amount of money for anybody, let alone vegetable growers operating on wafer-thin margins.”
Woolworths released a statement in response to Mulcahy's letter highlighting that it's “extremely proud of its world-first campaign where we partnered with Jamie Oliver, Nutrition Australia and Australian farmers to get kids excited about eating more fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables.”
The supermarket giant also explained that it was disappointed with the way that Ausveg has handled the claims, “It’s disappointing that Senator Xenophon and Ausveg didn’t contact us.”
“We could have explained that the contribution was entirely voluntary, how around half our suppliers chose to work with us on the campaign which benefits the whole fruit and vegetable industry and how participating growers are paying less than 2 per cent of the cost of a case of produce.”
Ausveg subsequently claims that Woolworths has cancelled a meeting it had planned to show international buyers from “crucial” Asian export markets to visit a distribution centre in Sydney.
However a spokesperson from Woolworths told AdNews that, “Yes we did cancel the meeting however it was because the person conducting the tour was unavailable.”
View the full letter via the Guardian here.
See Woolworths' full statement below:
“Woolworths is extremely proud of its world-first campaign where we partnered with Jamie Oliver, Nutrition Australia and Australian farmers to get kids excited about eating more fresh, healthy fruit and vegetables.
We’ve had a great response from our customers buying more fresh food and the early signs are encouraging. It’s great for our customers to be eating better and great for our growers to be selling more fresh produce.
With Australia having one of the highest obesity rates in the world we are delighted about working with a world-famous fresh food campaigner like Jamie Oliver and in partnership with our growers to sell more healthy, fresh food.
It’s disappointing that Senator Xenophon and Ausveg didn’t contact us. We could have explained that the contribution was entirely voluntary, how around half our suppliers chose to work with us on the campaign which benefits the whole fruit and vegetable industry and how participating growers are paying less than 2 per cent of the cost of a case of produce.”
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