The Produce Index

A young couple travelled to Europe to discover how to make cheese. They returned to the green northeast of Victoria and teamed up with an organic dairy farmer with a rare French breed of milking cows.

Richard Cornish learns how one family helped change the way a fishing community pulled fish from the sea, ensuring commercially caught seafood for the generations to come.

A decade ago, a young chef left the kitchen and travelled to France to learn traditional cooking and preserving pork from old-school charcutiers in Gascony and French Basque Country.

Wild deer are wreaking environmental havoc across Victoria. But in the Otway Ranges, writes Richard Cornish, one expert marksman is taking the deer one animal at a time, butchering them and delivering lean, clean venison to homes and restaurants across the state.

Sweet, plump, native blue mussels are being grown in Port Phillip without nothing artificial in sight, writes Richard Cornish.

Under the shadow of an extinct volcano west of Daylesford is a regenerative farm where rare breed pigs and cattle are raised on a complex pasture of grasses, flowers and vegetables. The resulting pork and beef from Brooklands Free Range Farms, writes Richard Cornish, is exceptional.

Pastured beef from a heritage Scottish breed of cattle with impeccable flavour and excellent marbling.

In this instalment of The Produce Index, Richard Cornish investigates an off-grid micro-business producing the world's most expensive spice on old gold-mining country near Bendigo.

In this instalment of The Produce Index, Richard Cornish discovers why Gippsland Jersey, a small, independent dairy in East Gippsland, punches above its weight in a milk sector dominated by foreign-owned dairies.