Leaving Melbourne to farm native Australian foods

The 59-year-old expanded his small commercial operation after two decades of hobby farming fruits indigenous to Australia.

It meant trading finance, management, consulting and marketing strategy for long days of planting and harvesting, four-and-a-half hours from the CBD.

"The whole idea of using our own native plants as a food source struck me as a no-brainer," Mr Koop said of his first experiences with native fruits in the '90s.

Mr Koop's farm in Nhill, Western Victoria, grows three types of native foods: muntries, quandongs and wattleseed.

Muntries are a native berry with a similar taste profile to apples.

"Like a miniature apple with a bit of cinnamon added to it - very palatable fresh off the vine," he said.

"They have four to five times the antioxidants of blueberries."

A parasitic plant that attaches itself to hosts, quandongs produce bright red fruits that are tart and high in vitamin C.

The better known wattleseed has been another staple of Aboriginal Australians for thousands of years for its high levels of protein, carbohydrates and dietary fibre.

Mr Koop said his crops require little water, could be irrigated with salty bore water and grew on infertile, sandy land regarded as poor quality from an introduced agricultural perspective.

"I've visited berry farms even in areas where there's high rainfall and they were constantly watering," he said.

"One of the ways to achieve regenerative farming and having less impact is simply to change the species that we farm to the plants that can grow here naturally."

Teams like the Aboriginal rangers at Black Duck Foods in Victoria's east Gippsland, who farm self-sustaining native grasses like kangaroo and dancing grass, are at the forefront of products like native grain flour.

Debates have arisen in recent years across the country about the lack of Aboriginal representation and opportunity in the native foods industry.

Mr Koop said native foods should be a bigger part of Australia's national identity and the industry could act as a positive "cultural bridge" for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

"It's not a matter of carving up a limited pie, it's a matter of growing something that's very promising together," he said.

Mr Koop recently held a workshop for Agriculture Victoria with Aboriginal entrepreneurs learning from his years of experience growing native fruit.

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Yuwaalaraay and Kooma elder Aunty Dale Chapman has worked with native foods for the past 25 years and said she felt "there is space for everyone" in the industry.

"But we always try to encourage as much as possible sourcing directly from Aboriginal growers, from First Nations businesses," she said.

The Queensland representative for First Nations Bushfood and Botanical Alliance has seen mainstream interest in native foods grow in the past two decades.

"Once upon a time, it was very hard to convince people to pick something up off the table or off the shelf," Aunty Dale said.

"These days, they're coming in and saying: I want this, I need that."

Aunty Dale said her clients were always innovating new ways to hero foods that have existed for thousands of years.

"We've got young chefs coming up in the world now that are using Australian native ingredients much better than in the past," she said.

"People are not afraid of it anymore, that's really good news for the industry."