Flood crisis in fresh produce industry

Australia faced another ‘unprecedented’ weather event when extreme flooding inundated whole towns across Queensland and New South Wales. The catastrophic level of flooding promoted closures and evacuations of businesses and homes across the region, causing havoc.

The Brisbane wholesale market was among the sites impacted by the floods, with water reaching a peak of about 8 metres at the site on the morning of Monday 28th February, which is 1metre lower than the 2011 flood peak. This forced the temporary closure of the market while Brisbane Market staff worked hard to clear the debris once the floods had subsided. The huge cleanup effort involved clearing out tonnes of destroyed produce from warehouses that had been inundated. Operators reported hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock lost. With the temporary closure of the Brisbane Market, growers in the region had to divert their produce to other major markets, in Melbourne and Sydney, to prevent food and financial waste. This has resulted in increased costs throughout the supply chain. Industry stakeholders have also noticed changes in produce quality. Jason Miles, from Ten Farms, has commented on changes he has noticed since the floods “We’re starting to see quality of fruit drop since the floods. For example, passionfruit grows on the vines, but because of the floods it was all under water for too long. There is fruit around, the quality is just not the best. The real impacts aren’t going to hit us for another month or two… Most of the growing regions for certain lines of veggies where Victoria import from all got flooded. Everything was under water for too long.”

Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continually warn us of the increased risk of extreme weather events, such as floods, due to a warming climate. These weather events create real challenges and disruptions across the food system, from production to transport, and Australia can expect these disasters to become more common and more extreme according to the most recent IPCC report. Governments need to increase resilience of food systems to climate shocks as a matter of urgency. Suggestions on how to do so include diversifying our food systems and looking at how and where we source our food; a more dispersed food supply chain to prevent dependency on highly centralised food processing and distribution; and strengthened local and regional food supply chains, to connect consumers directly to local food suppliers and increase resilience to shocks.

The floods have delivered yet another blow to growers all over Australia, who have faced significant hardship and challenges over the past two years due to Covid19 and supply chain disruptions.