High price to pay for fresh food
THERE’S nothing better than eating Australian grown produce.
Australia’s farmers continue to deliver the world’s best fresh fruit and vegetables and through the Covid-19 pandemic our food security has remained one of our strengths.
But you may have noticed that some fresh produce you put in your shopping basket has gone up in price a bit lately.
These price rises are plain to see in the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). In the June quarter CPI, the price of vegetables increased by 5.5 per cent and fruit by 4.7 per cent. The ABS points to a range of reasons for the price hike including floods in growing regions of New South Wales and a shortage of pickers.
The reasons for these price increases on fresh produce are not new to us.
We know extreme weather events cause havoc across Australian farms. Devastating floods and long-term drought have had a severe impact on food production across Australia. So too the shocking and horrific bushfires in 2019-20 that damaged over 2.45 million hectares of agriculture land across Australia.
There’s also a chronic agriculture workforce shortage, further exacerbated by lack of quarantine facilities and vaccines and the impact of ongoing lockdowns across domestic and international borders. Modelling undertaken by Ernst & Young for Horticulture Innovation Australia indicates the peak casual labour supply gap could range from 11,000 to 24,000 workers in early 2022. This is not good news for farmers or consumers given summer is Australia’s peak picking season.
The impact this workforce shortage has on how much you pay for some fruit and veggies was evident in a report published by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES).
Back in March ABARES predicted that workforce shortages on Australian farms would reduce fruit production by as much as 17 per cent and vegetable production by around 2 per cent. ABARES indicated the impact on the hip pocket of Australian consumers would be a price rise in the vicinity of between seven and 29 per cent.
The disappointing aspect of these price hikes is that the Morrison government has the reform levers to do something about the issues highlighted by the ABS and ABARES.
Acting on climate change would be a first priority. Australian farmers are already leading the way. The Morrison government is not even moving at a snail’s pace to keep up.
The infighting in the Nationals about whether the agriculture sector should be included in the net zero emissions by 2050 target is a disgrace and it does nothing to ease the minds of those farmers who are providing innovative solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the agriculture sector now.
Remember when Barnaby
Joyce argued that the price of a leg of lamb would skyrocket from action on climate change but now, ironically, it’s his government’s lack of action that is driving up the cost of fruit and vegetables.
In terms of fixing the workforce shortage across Australian farms, sadly the Morrison government has been all announcement and no delivery.
The necessary reform it needed to do to get workers on to Australian farms has failed miserably. Dedicated quarantine facilities to help get agriculture workers into Australia don’t exist.
The Morrison government has yet to respond to the National Agriculture Workforce Strategy and it’s been sitting idle on the
Minister’s desk since last October.
Solutions have been put forward in this strategy, but the Morrison government clearly has no will to act.
It is not good enough that another year has gone by and farmers are still waiting for the Morrison government to do something constructive to help. Clearly, the government has failed at its job.
With picking season only four months away farmers will again be searching for workers to pick their highly-valued fresh produce.
There may also be other challenges in front of them including more extreme weather events. Without a genuine and immediate plan from the Morrison government it may well be that Australians will keep paying more for our delicious fruit and vegetables.
This is an unacceptable situation given the solutions the Morrison government has at hand to help our farmers now.