In An Ironic Turn Of Events, Australians Are Now Being Urged To Eat More Avocados
Eating smashed avo on toast will no longer affect your credit rating.
Avocados, once a status symbol in Australian households akin to pay TV, have dramatically dropped in price across the country to the point where farmers are now begging consumers to eat more of them.
A recent report into the Australian avocado market has described that an “avo-lanche” of new produce threatens the financial viability of the entire Australian market, with farmers currently supplying 22 avocados per Australian.
The report commissioned by Rabobank identified a bumper crop in Western Australia has led to a staggering increase of 265 percent over last year’s total production, with fears that growers will be forced to dump their produce to avoid crashing the market.
“Some growers are pulling out older trees … or blocks that aren’t performing that have problems,” Avocados Australia chairman Jim Kochi told the ABC, as growers report their lowest returns in 20 years amid increased costs of labour and fertiliser.
Avocado grower Jo Houghton told Junkee that the fruit’s ability to be grown almost all year round, combined with the product’s high value led to growers investing heavily into the market in Australia.
“Avocados were a product that was fetching really high prices,” Houghton told Junkee. “So about five years ago a bunch of people thought, ‘Awesome, let’s plant a bunch of trees!'”
Houghton, who runs the boutique avocado farm Avocado Jo, says that the profits corporate farms sought to reap from the notoriously expensive fruit have been dashed by saturation of the market, as everyday costs further diminish returns.
“They’ve been planted on a hugely commercial scale in Australia, predominately in WA and Northern Queensland. There is only a couple of months in the year where there isn’t much of a supply, we can eat avocados all year round,” Houghton told Junkee.
“There are some farmers that may need to change farming practices in the future, and there will definitely be some businesses that may no longer find it viable — especially with inflation and costs of fertiliser, and being able to find contractors. That will be a challenge for small farmers and large farmers alike.”
“The farmers will need to be more and more accountable to provide this excellent quality fruit, and to have the farming practices that consumers want.”
In this bizarre new dimension we’ve entered — sponsored by late-stage capitalism — the fruit that economists once blamed for preventing millennials from entering the housing market is cheaper and more readably available than freaking lettuce.
Looks like avocado for dinner and bananas for desert again ffs pic.twitter.com/3GjssonZMg
— Stockrocker (@Stockrocker_ASX) February 5, 2022