Analysis of the interview transcript below, conduct thematic analysis for 3 to 5 themes and consider the following questions for elaboration

What data points overlapped/re-enforced one another? What data points seemed to conflict with one another? If further research were being conducted, what would your recommendations be to the research team? How strong/conclusive was the evidence? Is it likely that other users may feel very different to that which is represented in this data set? What key questions are still unanswered?

Interview Transcript

XZ: Hi Kevin, Thank you so much for accepting my interview today, today we will focus on our research topic farm food waste, such as excessive production from the farm, I believe based on our conversation, it will help us a lot on our research topic about agricultural food waste. Just let you know our conversation will be recorded for research purposes, will you be OK with that?

Kevin: Yes

XZ: First, could you please tell me the story of the Blue Hill farm?

K: Blue Hill Berries and Cherries is a family-owned and operated farm, My Great-grandfather William Chapman purchased the property in Silvan in 1894 then they decide to grow berries and cherries here. After more than 100 years, our family has developed a well-sustained business and they have passed us a wealth of farming knowledge to make sure the best berries and cherries are produced.

XZ: Thanks, can you please tell me about yourself? What is your role on the farm and how do you work it out.

K: My parent lives on this farm for their entire life and I was also born on the farm, when I was young, my father took me to the garden every day so I watch him working for the whole time when I grow a little bit, he started to help him on harvesting then slowly I learn the knowledge of how to grow berries and cherries. When I started my Uni, I lived in a different city, so I would go back once a month then work two days on the farm and then go back to where I lived because I had a regular job. I studied engineering and I got several years into engineering and then I had a summer of working at a local construction company. At that point, I decided that Id rather go farm. I left my job and went back to the farm and Ive been poor ever since! However, I am quite enjoying my life now. I took over the management of the farm from my dad when I was 30 as he is at the age to retire, with many years of working experience on the farm, I am familiar with every single process of growing berries and cherries. As the farm business is developing, I am spending most of my time learning how to run it as a company such as business operations, marketing, e-commerce, and so on. However, I still roll my sleeves up sometimes in the peak season to help on the ground when we short of hands. My biggest focus these days is how to make the business more sustainable also develop social responsibility.

XZ: In General, what do you know about farm food waste and why it is happening?

K: It is quite a big and common issue for all farmers, normally people see food waste in their households and supermarkets, but they cant see there is a big portion of the production has been wasted on the farm before it reaches to the stores and customers, lots of the food may be left unharvested due to overproduction, you will have some magic times that the farm produces lots more than expected. Other reasons are including adverse weather, processing issues, transportation damage, and volatile economies.

XZ: What kind of problems are caused due to farm waste and how do you deal with the waste?

K: We dont have a big problem with food waste because we are quite good at controlling the production amount and as a quite mature business model, we have high-quality products and a relatively stable distribution channel to sell our fresh produce to the market. However, food waste is still happening, I feel really bad when I saw the berries went bad on the farm because we couldnt sell them and those farm waste could cause a series of problems. For example, when fruit gets spoiled and left on the ground, it provides breeding places for pests such as flies, mice. Also rotting fruit in the land produces methane which is polluting the air, some of the rotting fruit could damage the plant and soil which is affecting the production next year. We were thinking about a few solutions to convert the waste to fertilizer but it costs too much,

XZ: What kind of solutions have you tried to prevent farm food waste?

K: Try to sell as much as possible, haha, but it is impossible to sell them all. In the beginning, we invite our family members, neighbours and their friends to our farm during harvest season to enjoy the berries and cherries, they all loved it. Then thought it could be a good idea to attract tourists as we are 20 minutes from Puffing Billy, it worked really well and people from everywhere can taste the delicious fruit, it also helped us with marketing and especially relieved the stress for us to sell them all. Another solution is we make berry jams using misshaped or imperfect ones as the retailer wont accept them, they are fresh and delicious just not looking great. We also donate our fruit to events and charities.

XZ: What are your concerns about your current solutions and what you are frustrated about?

K: The berry picking is relying on the number of tourists. From 2020 due to the COVID restrictions, the number of tourists dropped significantly, especially overseas tourists, we had to close down the farm for a few months.

XZ: How about the berry jams?

K: It is series of great products but we are not making lots of profit from it, the cost of making jam is quite high as we dont have our facility ourselves, we have to send to the factory to process and pay for the packaging. The distribution channel for the Jam is a bottleneck too, there are not many people who know our jam so you cant find them in coles and woollies, if we would have a high volume sale then we can build our factory to make it a proper business.

XZ: How the other berry cherry farm stops and processes those wastes?

K: As far as I know, they also have the berry pick program as it is very popular, some of the farms also making dried berries or frozen berries.

XZ: Do you hear anything about farm waste from others such as other farm owners or news? How do the other farm owners deal with agricultural food waste you heard about?

K I heard that about 1/3 of the worlds food is wasted and most of them ended up in landfills, it also costs the economy lots of money. Some of the farm owners I know convert food waste to compost or mulch which can then be used to improve the quality of their farms soil, some of them make surplus food into fodder for their livestock. People also sell their fruit to pharmaceutical companies as berries and cherries have lots of ingredients that are needed for their products.

XZ: What kind of options you have tried on storage and packaging to prevent food waste?

K: Most of our fruits are packed freshly with plastic boxes as you see in the supermarkets as people prefer the clean and fresh look. We are considering making frozen products or vacuum package for longer life.

XZ: In general, Do you think it is important to prevent farm food waste and why?

K: Yes it is very critical for the farming industry, stop farm waste will save a lot of work and money for farm owners, also it will help with the pollution caused by farm waste.

XZ: What are the issues and blockage you realize in the current process of dealing with farm food waste?

K: Not all farmers have the money to build facilities to process expired food. Take us for example, because our profit margin is very thin, most of the income has to be used to ensure the next year's production and deal with some unexpected situation. So we can hardly afford the expensive equipment and site construction. Another problem is labour. Every farm needs a lot of manpower to pick the fruit in the harvest season, and because the time frame is unpredictable, these workers need a lot of flexibility, so it is often difficult to find enough resource when needed, which leads to the failure of picking the ripe fruit in time.

XZ: What is your expectation of improving the food waste and what are your future goals for the farm?

K: We hope to shorten the harvest time as they ripen quickly and improve the method of food preservation to increase the shelf-life of the fruit. We also would like to broaden the product line in the future such as dried fruit, berry snack, ice cream, etc., to diversify our business portfolio, I believe it will also help prevent food waste.

XZ: Lastly, What kind of suggestion you have for the industry and government to help the situation?

K: First of all, I think every farm owner should pay attention to the problem of food waste and be proactive to find solutions. The whole farming industry should collaborate and share their knowledge, work together to deal with farm food waste. It will be also very helpful that markets accept all edible produce with flaws in the appearance. Of course, the government should introduce relevant policies to subsidize the purchase of facilities and equipment, increase efforts to publicize relevant knowledge and supervise and manage the processing of food waste.

XZ: Again, thank you so much for your time to participate in the interview and have a nice day!

K: You are welcome, have a nice day!