Fred Keane as a major influence on mechanical harvests/cooperatives sets up almond industry in South Australia
Fred Keane (inset) pushed ideas on mechanical harvesting and cooperatives that particularly influenced northern Adelaide Plains almond growers such as Jim Pierson, pictured with his son Ben, trading as AJS Pierson and Son, in a South Australian almond business that he saw grow enormously.
Images courtesy Almondco
Fred Keane, inducted into the Australian almond industry hall of fame in 2011, floated the idea that led to South Australia’s major Almondco’s grower-owned marketing and processing enterprise.
Born in 1918, Keane grew up surrounded by almonds grown by his father Albert Keane along the Sturt Creek at Marion, south of Adelaide. With Pethick Wonders, Johnston Prolific and Chellaston the main almond varieties, the harvesting was done by hand with sheets on either side of the tree and limbs hit with sticks to remove the crop. This was a part-time enterprise as Albert Keane worked full time at a brickworks. With his sons, he used to crack their crop open by hammer sitting around the kitchen table.
After World War I, Fred Keane leased three acres of almonds from his father at Marion. Fred and wife Lesley bought land at Angle Vale in 1953 and, because there was no water on the property, grew their own trees at Marion for the new orchard. They planted 30 acres of Papershells, Strout, Chellaston, Johnston Prolific, Pethick Wonder and B2. In the early years, Keane didn't water the trees at all,\ but later sank a bore and used portable aluminum pipes with sprinklers attached.
In 1963, Keane retired from the army and became a full time orchardist and bought more land in the Angle Vale area to grow almonds. Keane's nursery started in 1966, growing almond trees and budwood of special varieties for growers.
After a trip to California in the early 1970s, Keane became convinced mechanical harvesting was the future way and organised a syndicate of local growers to buy a set of harvesting equipment. This was the start of mechanical harvesting in the northern Adelaide Plains area. Initial problems mainly stemmed from trees and orchards being trained and spaced to suit hand harvesting.
Working with Brenton Baker and David Cartwright from the South Australian government agriculture department, Keane brought new varieties and rootstocks into Australia for testing at the old Northfield research centre. One of the rootstocks, Bright's Hybrid, proved important for the almond industry, particularly the northern Adelaide Plains area due to its salinity tolerance. Keane was a founding member of the Almond Improvement Society, putting in place the the successful and crucial budwood scheme underpinning the genetic quality of the trees grown and planted.
Keane, as a member of the Almond Grower Co-operative Committee, at the Adelaide southern suburb of Edwardstown, visited many almond growers to provide advice. He was an inaugural member of the northern Adelaide Plains Almond Group in the 1970s where he worked with four growers to buy a mechanical harvester each, and work as mini co-operative that was key to their growth.
Jim Pierson, whose family had bought farm land at Virginia decades before, was one of those northern Adelaide Plains almond growers. The Piersons were previously market gardeners at Campbelltown in Adelaide’s northeast suburbs. With their shift to the northern plains, they starting out predominantly in potatoes and celery but the Piersons and other local growers learned that Australia was importing almonds to meet consumption demands. After their first almond harvest, laboriously hand knocked from trees, the switch to mechanising and a mini cooperative, influenced by Fred Keane, saw a gradual transition out of potatoes and celery and into almonds.
Jim Pierson also enjoyed the greater benefits of the bigger Almondco cooperative and was on its board for 20 years when he saw the industry grow enormously.