One of Australia’s largest lettuce growers expects vegetable prices to fall from next week.
John Said, executive director of producer and vegetable supplier Fresh Select, said the recent heavy rains had had a major impact on the market.
“It simply came to our notice then. The first one some time ago saturated our soils and made it very difficult for us to plant … A second flood not long ago ended all the crops we had in the soil “, he said.
Said said the replanting was causing a massive supply gap, with the only harvestable lettuce that survived the floods.
“We are seeing these price increases due to supply pressure,” he said.
The Victorian producer hoped that drier weather would increase supply.
“Clearly there isn’t enough lettuce around, hopefully next week we’ll have some relief.”
But the top body for Australian vegetable growers, AusVeg, warns consumers that prices are likely to stay high due to production pressures and bad weather.
“Pressure on production costs has been on us for 12 or 18 months; it’s been growing for a long time,” Tyson Cattle, AusVeg’s national director of public affairs, told AAP.
He said the sharp rises in recent months had been driven by weather events on the Queensland food platter.
Livestock warned consumers that prices would likely remain high as long as production cost issues continue.
“We will not go back to the prices we saw at pre-COVID-19 levels of cheap fresh produce,” Cattle said.
AAP