Virus smashes avo trade

Pandemic, weather woes hurt industry

THE COVID-19 crisis couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Far North’s avocado growers, with the cafe and restaurant market disappearing right in the middle of harvest.

Avocados Australia chair Jim Kochi said the pandemic, mixed with early expectations of a low yield coming from the Tablelands farms, contributed to a “very stressful season” for local producers.

“The frost last September – which hit at flowering time, and the cold weather knocks the flowers so we don’t get fruit – meant we were already expecting a lower harvest,” he said.

“Then, when we were a couple of weeks into the harvest, we have the COVID-19 shutdown of most of our markets.

“That hit right before Easter and cut down the market opportunities for our grade-one fruit – that’s the next grade down from premium – and mainly goes into restaurants.

“During the week the restaurant industry cut down and avocado prices crashed by 30 per cent.

“Because the fruit didn’t have anywhere to go it was moving sideways into the major chain stores, which typically deals in premium fruit, and they didn’t want a whole lot of second-grade fruit which put pressure on the whole market.

“Add to that wholesalers were asking growers to back off the harvest because they couldn’t move the fruit and had nowhere to store what was coming off the trees.”

Mr Kochi said his early estimation of the harvest was revised several times during the year as weather and the pandemic made a mark.

“Last year we did about 4.15 million trays from North Queensland and, after the frost last September, my expectation was we would get about half that this year,” he said.

“Then I revised my forecast to somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 million trays.”

The Far North’s avocado season has come to an end and, while the numbers are still being crunched, Mr Kochi anticipates the 2020 yield will be between 3.5 millions and 4.1 million trays.