Until recently, Ray Pool was the proud owner of a bountiful, lovingly tended orchard of peaches. Now, there’s a vague sense of embarrassment as Pool mournfully prods at the tangled branches that once bore his livelihood.

“I don’t like coming down here,” he says, reluctantly surveying the abandoned orchard. “This should all be irrigated, the branches pruned back. My whole life’s work has gone into growing fruit, doing it properly. To see the mess here is sort of depressing.”

Pool is one of 61 fruit growers who were cut off by SPC Ardmona, a fresh fruit processor and cannery, earlier this year. Pool’s fate was delivered in May when an SPC representative walked onto his farm, near the small town of Invergordon, and told him he was out. He hasn’t heard from the company since.

The timing was far from ideal for 63-year-old Pool, whose body has been gradually broken down by a lifetime of harvesting fruit seven days a week. He had hoped to wind down as he approached retirement, and hand the property on to his son.

Instead, like many in farming communities, he’s facing an uncertain future. The bank is repossessing the farm. With some luck, Pool and his family will retain their house, but his superannuation pot is empty.

“We had 10 years of drought, then hail and frost and then floods,” he says, shooing away flies that are congregating around the untended young peaches. “We borrowed a lot of money to plant trees for the cannery and then we have the rug pulled from underneath us.

“A lot of growers are in a very depressed state because they don’t know what the future is. I’m too old to get a job, one that suits, anyway. It really plays on your mind, particularly the age I am.”

In many ways, Pool’s tale is one of globalisation in microcosm, played out on the monoculture of northern Victoria’s plains.

The region, Goulburn Valley, gives its name to the best-known range of fruit-based products sold by SPC. The business, which has a century-long presence in the regional hub of Shepparton, is something of a throwback – not only does it sell Australian-only fruit, its suppliers come from a narrow arc of intensively farmed land adjoining its cannery.

When it comes to fruit processing, SPC is the last Australian business left standing. It’s not hard to see why – cheap imports and the strong dollar have caused deep financial wounds.

Throw in the vagaries of a supermarket duopoly and a raft of other issues faced most starkly by regional Australia and it’s little surprise that SPC, which suffered a loss of $25m this year, is so candid about its desire for government assistance.

The business is seeking $50m, split equally between state and federal governments, in order to stay afloat. The previous federal Labor government agreed to hand over the cash, but the new industry minister, Ian Macfarlane, is proving a tougher nut to crack. A decision is expected imminently.

“We’ve convinced two Labor ministers already and I think I’ll be able convince a third minister,” says Peter Kelly, the upbeat managing director of SPC. “I’m quite impressed by [Macfarlane] but he’s got to get it through the cabinet.

“We’re not a basket case. We’ve never asked for money before. If we didn’t have a good plan, our investor wouldn’t be prepared to back us.”

That investor is Coca-Cola Amatil, an Australia-based bottling company with a cash-drenched name. Kelly waves away the suggestion that the taxpayer shouldn’t prop up a business with such hefty backing.

“Why would you put, say, $100m of investment into a loss-making company?” he says. “Why should a private company have to make up for the fact the markets are being manipulated by people dumping products, or the dollar being pumped up, or by retail concentration? Why should they bear all the burden?”

Kelly is irked by foreign fruit suppliers he feels are “gaming the system” by “dumping” their products – in other words, selling them cheaply in Australia, below the price they’d charge in their own countries.

The anti-dumping regulator recently decided to impose tariffs on 14 Italian tomato producers for doing just this; a victory Kelly feels is long overdue. He believes that if Australian producers are protected from cheap imports, the dollar eases off and the supermarkets do their bit, the business would have a decent future.

Since Pool and the other growers were axed earlier this year, there have been some flickers of hope for SPC. Woolworths and Coles have both switched to Australia-produced canned fruit, allowing SPC to take back some growers. The “100% Australian-made” text on packaging has been enlarged to appeal to customer patriotism. Sales have edged up.

But the scars of downsizing are still evident. A total of 750,000 fruit trees, vulnerable to pests if left alone, were earmarked to be pulled out of the ground due to the cancelled contracts. Even with the supermarkets’ backing, half a million plants are being ripped from the soil at great expense, a highly visible sign of growers’ distress.

It could get worse – a report commissioned by the Shepparton city council has found that should the SPC cannery close, more than 2,000 people would lose their jobs, with the reverberations rumbling throughout this traditionally one-industry town. Unemployment, which is already high, would hit 11% – double the national figure.

Kelly admits that SPC has had “some difficulty” in its relationship with growers, blaming a communication breakdown.

“I chose to show some of them our profit and loss and they were surprised we were making such a huge loss,” he says. “People who criticise us should look around – we are the last remaining business in canned fruit. We’re the survivor. Everyone else has shut up and gone. We chose not to pack up and go to a cheap labour market.

“When people are not selling to us, they are bitter. They’ve lost everything and that’s not their fault. It’s devastating to see the trees pulled up.”

But does SPC feel it has an old-fashioned social contract with its growers?

“Yes, we have a moral imperative,” Kelly insists. “We are Australians and we feel an obligation to put back into the community. Our importance to the region is a strong one – it’s not like Sydney or Melbourne. If we go, no one will just step in and replace us.”

Growing peaches takes time. Once you plant a tree, it takes at least three years before you can start getting fruit from it. It isn’t an industry you scale up and down quickly. Tony Latina, a peach grower near Cobram, was told after 45 years supplying SPC that he was no longer needed. Latina took a chainsaw to his peach trees, only for the chain to break. His wife, sensing an omen, implored him not to repair the saw. Sure enough, out of nowhere, Latina got a call the next day from SPC, asking him to produce half of his previous quota.

It’s a bewildering time for Latina, who has been left with a mish-mash of chopped down peach trees, new trees for the fresh fruit market and a mixture of cherries and nectarines – an attempt to diversify away from peaches.

“I was shocked when they told me – I didn’t expect to be cut and I was surprised to be asked back,” he says. “The feeling among growers is anger. To tell them they are no longer required, that they have no income, is devastating. Some have gone into a denial. As an association [of peach growers], we have told them there is counselling there for them as we do fear for their safety. The real effect will [come] this summer when it’s clear they have no income.”

Back on Ray Pool’s forsaken farm, this realisation is beginning to sink in.

“Family farms won’t be here in the next 10 to 15 years, unless something drastically changes,” he says. “The community spirit just isn’t what it used to be. The farms around here – what are people going to diversify into? They’ll only be good as hobby farms, to run a few horses around. Certainly no good for fruit.”