May is the month our budgets will bear brunt of Debbie

Plenty of towns are still clearing up in the aftermath of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie, but for most of us, the hurt is still to come.

As a long report in The Conversation put it, Debbie has blown a hole in our winter vegetable supply. According to the report, that’s because the cyclone hammered one area that’s vital to Australia’s food supply: Bowen.

The Queensland town produces about a third of the whole country’s fresh beans, about a quarter of the fresh tomatoes and almost half of our capsicums, as well as corn, cucumbers, pumpkin, zucchini, squash, eggplant and chillies, not to mention mangoes and melons.

The Queensland Farmers Federation, which put the damage caused by Debbie to Bowen’s vegetable industry at about $100 million, or 20 percent of this season’s crop, expects supermarket prices to start rising in May as the supply of tomatoes and capsicums get squeezed. 

The Conversation suggests that the price impact could last for some time, because the cyclone also destroyed many famers’ packing facilities and storage sheds, and has waterlogged the soil, making planting the next crop trickier.

Although the Queensland government has pledged to offer farmers loans of up to $250,000 to help them repair the damage and get back to work, “consumers of fresh vegetables in Sydney and Melbourne and many other places are likely to find themselves paying more until the shortfall can be replaced,” the agriculture experts writing for The Conversation warned.

The fact that a cyclone can knock out a major production reason and put the country at a shortfall also points to a bigger problem, the experts warned: a lack of resilience in Australia’s fresh vegetable supply. Unless that changes, future price spikes may be something we have to get used to.

Do you try to buy seasonal fruits and vegetables? Do you avoid your favourites when they jump in price?