The newly elected chairman of the Australian Macadamia Society (AMS) believes Australia needs to lead the charge to increase global consumption and that investment markets should wake up to the long-term opportunities in agriculture.

“The consumers are out there,” he said.

“The most important things are to not keep them waiting and to deliver a quality product.”

Australia currently produces about 30 per cent of the world’s macadamia crop, making it the largest producer globally in an industry worth more than $280 million.

But getting banks, business and politicians to see the growth potential for macadamias is proving harder than it seems.

Mr Starkey said due to tree crops such as macadamias being long-term investments, there was resistance among investors.

“We don’t have a political environment at the moment that sees this problem – we’re not getting through to them,” he said.

“Agriculture doesn’t seem to market itself well as an investment product.”

The industry had learnt from previous surges in investment – such as the failed managed investment schemes (MIS) in the almond industry where considerable captital was pumped in but poorly managed.

“We need to increase our production because the demand is there and we stifle further development of the market if we just continue to under supply,” Mr Starkey said.

“There is a lot more money in macadamias than we’re making.”

The push to increase world production is an unusual stance within agriculture where so many fresh products aim for higher values by having less available to market.

Mr Starkey said Australian macadamia growers had embraced a new attitude when it came to competition by asking whether other countries would contribute to overall consumption.

“That’s a total shift in dialogue in the sense that you’re not looking at, ‘he’s growing and competing with me’, but ‘he’s potentially growing and adding to the sum of the whole’,” he said.

Mr Starkey, who owns Oxley Plantations at Brooklet on the NSW North Coast and is also a director of grower-owned company Cape Byron Macadamias, has taken the chairman’s job from retiring NSW grower Kim Wilson.

He said production and grower productivity were key areas vital to the ongoing success of the industry, which recently held its annual conference drawing 200 key players to hear industry updates and new research results under the theme “open mind, open doorway – making knowledge work”.