RECENT media reports point to the Pacific Islander Worker Scheme as being a major flop.

Pacific nation leaders reckon this is a pretty poor show, considering Australia wants closer economic ties with them.

When the Federal Government proudly announced last year it would issue 2500 visas to seasonal workers from Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, it was hailed as a breakthrough.

But we are now into the second stage of the plan and it hasn't even attracted 100 seasonal workers to Australia.

New Zealand successfully used a similar scheme to employ some 2000 seasonal workers from Pacific nations.

It was a win-win for the NZ horticulture industry and the communities of the home nations who supplied the workers.

But in Australia, extra costs within the scheme's structure meant it was cheaper for Australian employers to hire labour locally.

As a result, the scheme hasn't helped with staffing numbers or cut operating costs within Australian horticulture.

The wider, underlying, problem is that much of our fruit and vegetable growing industries just can't afford to pay for extra skilled or unskilled workers.

It's a major conundrum for many Australian small businesses engaged in the food industry; Australians enjoy an enviable standard of living, yet we want our food to be cheap.

The fact that we seem to have cruised through the global economic downturn is proof of our good fortune.

Our natural resource base held up national incomes and continued to spread those benefits deep into the underlining economy.

With those benefits come the high labour costs, which, over recent decades, have priced many industries either out of business or towards much higher mechanisation.

While having these decent income standards, our affluent society, when it comes to food, expects not only to be immune from the risks of the diseases of the world, but also to pay as little as possible for its food.

Over the past couple of years, politicians and consumer advocates have demanded this, supporting an environment where cheapest is best for the consumer.

Of course this cajoles supermarkets to compete for the mantle to be champion of the consumer, strongly promoting "value".

Those same representatives of the consumer are at the same time demonising businesses which import food products that help deliver that result.

In this environment, it is a crying shame but little wonder that we will import more of our processed foods and will gradually see more of the volumes of fresh produce produced at the margins.

We can't afford to have our lifestyle cake and eat it too.