A farmer from Orange described the findings of a recent supermarket inquiry as "promising", but he remains skeptical about their implementation.
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The public hearing for the Senate Select Committee on Supermarket Prices held in Orange in March, exposed the decades of hardship faced by farmers in the horticultural industry.
The three farmers who attended the hearing spoke of price hikes, increased price of electricity and supermarket power imbalances.
The findings from the inquiry were released last week in a 177-page report, including 14 recommendations.
Some include making the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct mandatory and the forced divestiture of supermarkets that "abuse their market power".
It also recommend making "the charging of excess prices" otherwise known as price gouging, illegal.
One of the farmers who shared their story at the public hearing was James McClymont who was an orchardist in Orange for over 50 years.
He said while the committee's recommendations "sound wonderful" he's concerned with how they will be implemented and regulated.
"All the recommendations sound promising but that requires even more red tape and public servants and I wonder just how effective they will be at getting to the truth," Mr McClymont said.
"How do you police price gouging? Who's going to do all the checking?" he said.
Mr McClymont transitioned from fruit to cattle farming four years ago as he believed there was no longer money or future in the fruit industry.
"I'm a bit upset about it because I know that I've lived through it for 50 years and it's just not good," Mr McClymont said.
"The bottom line is that we're not getting enough money for our produce."
Out of the six public hearings for the inquiry only one of them was held in a regional town, Orange, while the rest were held in Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart.
Mr McClymont said the regional inquiry allowed politicians who may be far removed from farms and production to hear the struggles farmers face first-hand.
"People don't realise how much work farmers do to give them cheap, beautiful food," Mr McClymont said.
"Farmers are a very dedicated lot, not just to their land but to the improvement of everyone's standard of living by doing what they do day in day out, they start the economic process but are given very little credit for the fact"
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), is the country's national competition, consumer, fair trading and product safety regulator.
The ACCC said it "notes" the report by the Senate Select Committee on Supermarket Prices and will "closely review" the report's findings.
The commission also said it has "consistently advocated for the Food and Grocery Code to be strengthened".
"The code should be mandatory, that the ability for suppliers to opt out of protections should be removed, and that civil pecuniary penalties should be introduced," it said.
Other recommendations from the inquiry include supermarkets being made to publish historical pricing data.
As well as adopt mandatory standards for unit pricing and notify customers of changes in sizes or prices of products.