Power to parents

CHANGING parent, rather than child, behaviour could be key to tackling childhood obesity, a Hunter and Illawarra study has found.

Make up your mind, Premier

EVERY new government strives to distinguish its agenda from its predecessor's, and the easiest way of doing so is to repudiate one or more of the major projects it has inherited. The easiest course, however, is not necessarily the wisest ��� a point that unfortunately seems lost on the Baillieu government. Four months after ending Labor's 11-year reign, the Coalition still cannot decide whether to proceed with several of the big-ticket items associated with the Brumby years: the $5 billion regional rail link, the $1.3 billon myki public-transport ticket system, the $360 million HealthSmart IT system for public hospitals and the $300 million wholesale fruit and vegetable market being built at Epping all have a question mark over their futures. A $4 million study of traffic congestion in Hoddle Street has been shelved, and the $700 million pipeline linking Melbourne's water supply to the Goulburn River is effectively in mothballs, to be used only in emergencies.

Blowout threat to market's future

THE total cost of relocating Melbourne's wholesale fruit and vegetable market has blown out to up to $670 million, throwing the controversial project into crisis.

Staff to get $500,000 in back pay

A FRUIT and vegetable retailer with stores in Malvern and Chadstone has been forced to give former and current staff more than $500,000 in back pay.

India's precious food supply stuck in mud

THE potatoes are washed and sorted by the women and children. The men pack them tightly into sacks, stitched with twine.

Shoppers benefit as prices fail to go bananas

WHENEVER there is bad weather in NSW and Queensland, bananas are the benchmark of how grocery bills will rise.

THREE OF A KIND

It was only a matter of time before we got tired of floury, tasteless tomatoes, which are bred for pest and bruise resistance and a long shelf life. Along with an interest in slow food and biodiversity has come the rediscovery of old varieties of fruit and vegetables, admired for their sometimes quirky, rather than classical, good looks and intense flavours. Because heirloom or heritage tomatoes are pollinated naturally, by birds, wind and insects, there's no control over the parent crop so there's always an element of surprise with each new generation. When nobody's sure who the father is, who knows what to expect?

Big tomato heist

Thieves have stolen a tonne of tomatoes from an Adelaide glasshouse.

Flush with success, farmers set for bumper crops

AFTER the drought, the floods and the locusts, the farming sector has finally received some positive news.