Buyers in Australia will have to continue to pay high prices for vegetables or risk seeing only imported frozen food in stores, Monte Farms, one of the largest vegetable producers in the country, said on July 26, according to the Australian television channel ABC.
This price situation has developed in the domestic market, as farmers struggle with constantly rising production costs and labor shortages. Agricultural producers have to significantly reduce the area under crops due to high costs and the lack of a sufficient number of workers. In addition, an unprecedented amount of winter vegetables grown in the state is heading to the east of the country after a series of natural disasters that destroyed crops in New South Wales and Queensland.
Monte Farms grows a variety of vegetables including lettuce, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach and kale. Luciano Monte, owner of the farm, said his company has taken the unprecedented step of cutting plantings in half this year due to ongoing labor shortages and high fertilizer and fuel costs.
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“The price we are getting now is what we need to survive on,” he said. “[Consumers] have to get used to this, otherwise they will have to get frozen food or food from abroad. The cost of fertilizer has increased by 100%, fuel by about 70-80%, labor has skyrocketed – you pay up to $34 an hour.”
Wholesaler Chris Hewitt of Quality Produce International said prices have risen significantly due to unusual demand for Western Australian vegetables from the eastern states. Winter vegetable crops in key agricultural regions of Queensland and New South Wales were destroyed by floods in May and June last year.
