Australian vegetable and potato grower body Ausveg has taken its fight against retailer Woolworths up a notch in response to added charges for a Jamie Oliver campaign, calling on the popular English chef to intervene.

Last week the organization cried foul over the fact Woolworths was demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars from growers to fund the promotion through a AUD$0.40 (US$0.38) per crate, in addition to the existing 2.5-5% fee already required for marketing growers' produce.

Ausveg called on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to investigate the matter, while independent Senator Nick Xenophon used the opportunity to highlight a bill aimed at curbing abuse of market power.

"We have now taken the step of writing to Mr Oliver to ask that he intervenes and pleads with Woolworths to refund this money to Australian vegetable growers," said Ausveg public affairs manager William Churchill.

"We have no issue with Mr Oliver, but for Woolworths to ask hard working Australian growers to stump up this additional money is unreasonable, unfair and un-Australian.

"Mr Oliver seems like a reasonable man, and he has done some good work in raising awareness about the need to eat healthy food, and this appeal to him is to try and stop growers from being unnecessarily squeezed.

Churchill said there had been an 'enormous' wave of public support for Australian growers since Woolworths' behavior came to light last week, but many farmers had already contributed money to the campaign and were left significantly out of pocket.

"AUSVEG is not opposed to the campaign per se and indeed supports trying to encourage children to eat healthier, but not at the expense of farmers’ businesses or their profitability," Churchill said.

"AUSVEG's primary concern is that financially-stretched Australian vegetable growers are being unfairly pressured in to contributing to a marketing campaign for a company, which in February posted a (AUD)$1.32 billion (US$1.24  billion) net profit."

"Clearly this campaign could be funded from Woolworth's own coffers, without having to further squeeze Aussie growers."

While Australia only has a very small fraction of the global population, its duopoly of Woolworths Limited and Coles' parent company Wesfarmers Limited both featured in the top 20 global retailers in a list compiled by Deloitte.

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