How Collaboration Is Powering Local Food in the Atherton Tablelands

Across the Atherton Tablelands, small-scale farmers grow some of the most diverse and abundant produce in Far North Queensland. For years, though, many have struggled to get their food onto the plates of local eaters. Without affordable, coordinated distribution, much of the region’s produce travels south to major markets, only to be sold back to Far North Queensland at a higher cost and with far more food miles.

That’s where the Collaborative Logistics Pilot comes in. Launched in September 2025 as part of the Atherton Tablelands Integrated Collaboration (ATIC), this 12-week pilot is testing shared storage and delivery models to make the local food system more efficient, resilient, and connected.

Rather than starting from scratch, the pilot builds on what’s already working. It makes use of existing delivery infrastructure, including Tom, Shelly and Ashleigh from Golden Oak Produce, who were already transporting their own mushrooms across the region. Now, their route links multiple farms with restaurants, cafés, and community hubs across the Tablelands and down to the coast.

We spoke with Tom about what the pilot means for farmers, how collaboration is improving efficiency, and what it feels like to be part of a region-wide shift towards keeping food truly local.

Why do you think this pilot is important for farmers in the Atherton Tablelands?

It’s been apparent for a long time that there’s great local produce up here, and it hasn’t been getting into the hands of people that have been chasing it. So a lot of people have been buying produce from other regions. It’s being trucked from the major produce markets down south, and it’s got a lot of food miles on it. The quality suffers as well because it’s sitting in warehouses for a long period of time.

So it’s been apparent that there’s a big gap there, and a lot of small producers here who are just going it alone — exactly the same as we have — are delivering their own stuff, maintaining their own delivery vehicles, and doing their own little runs. The more that we can tie this together and the more efficient we can make it for everyone, the better.

What does a typical day look like for you without the Collaborative Logistics Pilot?

Okay, so we’re doing delivery runs Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays across the Tablelands and then down to the coast, picking up produce from all the local farmers and then dropping it down to the coast at a couple of hubs, a few restaurants, cafés, and people who are chasing local produce.

How has adding more stops to your existing route changed your workload?

Well, we were actually doing a lot of similar runs, but just not picking up other people’s produce. So tying all that together hasn’t added a lot. There are lots of short stops along the routes that we didn’t have before.

Have there been new connections between farmers and retailers through the pilot so far?

Yeah, absolutely. So this week we dropped off, I don’t know how many boxes, but I’d say maybe twenty-odd, new connections between growers and retailers, or chefs, restaurants, cafés. So, definitely getting access to growers that those people weren’t even aware existed.

That’s been great, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. For example, chefs want to see a lot more in-region produce, and as soon as we popped up with a few samples and a few connections we could make, there’s been just an overwhelmingly positive response to that.

How does it feel knowing you’re supporting the local food system?

Great! Been massively passionate about it for a long time, but not really sure where to direct that energy and we’d talked about various ways we might do that ourselves. So, Sustainable Table coming on board and involving us in this pilot has really been a great outlet for that energy; a great way for us to really focus on getting produce down the hill and into the right hands.