In April 1998 Essentially Australia founder, Greg Trevena, established a native Australian rainforest plantation which included for one of its native plant businesses (Rainforest Foods), just 20 kilometres out of Byron Bay, Australia.
The Australian rainforest plantation was established and has been maintained without chemicals of any kind and the only irrigation has been from the sky.
• Anise Myrtle and more.
Other native foods can be found growing wild on the property like rainforest raspberries, sandpaper figs, bopple nuts and more.
In 2009 RIRDC (The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation) published a book on ‘Health Benefits of Australian Native Foods’. The report stated that Australian ‘Native species evaluated in this study exhibited superior antioxidant capacity as compared to Blueberry standard, renowned worldwide as the ‘health-promoting fruit’.
The Australian rainforest plantation has been proven to be an excellent example of an extremely low intensive form of agriculture as the plantation has been harvested for its fruit production. The only input has been the hand harvesting of crops and the odd cutting (slashing) of grass and weeds between the rows of trees.