Tuesday 10 July 2012

Agriculture touted as saviour for Grafton


Grafton Chamber of Commerce president
Jeremy Challacombe at a rally to save
Grafton jail (
 - ABC North Coast)

Chamber of Commerce head says Grafton needs to plan for the future and look at resurrecting farming as a major industry The president of Grafton's Chamber of Commerce is calling for a massive rethink about the city's future and what industries it needs to preserve or resurrect.
Jeremy Challacombe said the closure of a Telstra call centre and an abattoir in recent years had hurt Grafton enough, and it could not cope with a proposed restructure of the local jail.
"We can't take much more," he said.
"We have got to get together as a community and say 'where are we going?'
"It's not about politics anymore, it's about our community and I would expect people from across the board to sit down and say 'where are we going to go, how can we rebuild this?'
"Led by council, led by the chamber, irrespective of political persuasions let's find out what the problems and see how we can counteract it, not only in this town, it's a model for other country towns too."
Mr Challacombe believes agriculture could play a major role in saving Grafton.
"We were a really strong agricultural centre, we've got a stack of water, a magnificent river, we've got a magnificent coverage of forest here," he said.
"We don't want to get into a debate as to wisely or not wisely using our natural resources, but we have the natural resources there to manage wisely.
"We can value-add. We've seen agriculture cut down and cut down and cut down - let's actually go the other way.
"I grow strawberries for example, I would love another dozen strawberry growers here then we can put in a strawberry factory, then we can start to move forward.
"Let's get some incentives to process and value-add to what we produce in this valley."
Original Article Here  

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