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Rachel Chambers is often sent photos from farmers showing rotting piles of fruit and vegetables that the big supermarkets have refused to buy.
The Queensland Fruit and Vegetable Growers chief executive has accused the big supermarkets of deliberately creating vast quantities of food wastage to flood the market.
Ms Chambers said farmers were routinely asked to grow large amounts of produce, only to be told at harvest time that there was not nearly enough demand, and about 40 per cent of their growers' produce was going to landfill.
"We have put forward — and, seriously, retailers prove me wrong — that the retailers are purposely oversupplying the market," Ms Chambers said.
"They are writing amounts in everyone's agreements telling them to grow lots of stuff, but our data shows they're only taking 60 per cent across the board of what they suggested they would take."
The organisation's comments come after national peak body AUSVEG raised the issue in a submission to the senate inquiry on supermarket prices this week.
A Woolworths spokesperson said the company's supply forecasts were informed by previous customer demand and buying patterns.
"Many factors contribute to industry-wide oversupply — reaching beyond the segment of growers we engage with," the spokesperson said.
"At their request, we share indications of customer demand for the upcoming season with some of our growers to support their planning and planting decisions."
A Coles spokesperson said the company valued its relationships with Australian farmers, some of which had gone on for over 50 years.
"Coles agrees volumes in advance with its suppliers," the spokesperson said.
"We generally agree [on] these a season in advance which allows our suppliers to grow crops with certainty, while not creating an oversupply.
"It also gives Coles' customers the confidence they will be able to buy in-season produce from our stores at great prices."
Ms Chambers said the vast oversupply of produce had negative flow-on effects for other growers who did not sell to the supermarkets, such as wholesalers or small farmers.
Brisbane mother Emma-Kate Rose started a direct farmer-to-consumer co-op, Food Connect, with her husband Robert Pekin in 2005.
Ms Rose said Food Connect was meant to create a fairer model for farmers like Robert, who lost his family dairy farm in the 1990s.
However she said the foundation collapsed late last year due to rising costs and sluggish sales.
"We tried to take on the food system by thinking about where the most inequities are in the food system and for us that was in distribution," Ms Rose said.
"We had to close at the end of 2022 because the cost-of-living crisis just smashed us.
"We saved our pennies for the slow period but by the time we got to November we had gone through all of our savings and we had to shut the doors in December."
Ms Chambers said ignorance among politicians was contributing to the squeeze on farmers.
After three trips to Canberra and 24 meetings, Ms Chambers said she encountered several common misnomers held by politicians.
She said many politicians believed farmers could pass on the cost of government levies and rebates to customers, not realising prices were set by supermarkets.
Ms Chambers said farmers had virtually zero knowledge of what price other farmers were being paid for the same product.
She said that information was monopolised by the big supermarkets, who held onto 65 per cent of the entire retail produce market.
Additionally, she said consumers were unaware that the cost of specials was born by farmers and not the supermarkets.
"I think this will be a very eye-opening period for consumers," Ms Chambers said.
"This is a long term systemic problem that has been going on for 15 years and this is our best chance to fix it."
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