Price hikes and shortages flagged after banana crops ‘cop a flogging’ in north Queensland floods | Queensland

Australians can expect banana shortages and raise prices with the start of cleaning in North Queensland north of QueenslandIt grows approximately 94 % of Australia Banana cropThe farmers say.

But the good news, for the consumers at least, is that any banana drama plays on the supermarkets in the coming days will be linked to the disruption of transportation, instead of destroying crops on a large scale – which means that one price of the country’s favorite fruits should be soon to return to Its nature.

Sugar prices should remain largely uncompromising, although 95 % of the country’s cane crop Queensland – Many in the north of the state.

But as the sun penetrates the depression that it has The tropical north was floodedThe water levels begin to retreat and start cleaning, many farmers will struggle with the repercussions of some The worst floods in living memory For some time so far.

Stephen Loui, Vice -Chairman of the Australian banana farmers Council, said only a small percentage of banana trees flooded by floods will be destroyed due to immersion, but a much larger percentage will have water roots.

He said: “It takes four to five months before the root system is recovered, so these plants will be … not at the height of performance, and you will get a decrease in crops in those areas.”

Louis Banana Cavandish is growing on about 154 hectares (380 acres) in the Nahr Valley, a region that the river “limits sudden floods” – which he described as “very rare” for Tully – was areas that were subject to it. I have not seen floating in “perhaps the past forty years.”

He said that Louis’s private farm “had been broken.”

“Ten acres have been completely destroyed,” he said.

About 100 people [acres] He had water ascended to clusters so that they would give up – and they are not named. I have processed 12 platforms, one of the fruit platforms this week … I usually do 50. So I will like this so far until March. “

But while he and other farmers from Tully will deal with the roads that were equipped and her water field for several weeks, Louis said that the scourge of the northern banana industry has now expanded and has now spread from around Lielland, 150 km north of Kirins, to Kennedy, south of Toulley.

“We have a varied variety now,” he said. “The flood may have affected a quarter of that, at most.”

But with Bruce Highway, which connects these areas to the populated southern pieces, Louis said that the distribution focuses on the banana of the country “will be empty.”

“The fruit, when its arrival, still has to ripen,” he said. This takes at least four days.

“So, yes, there will be the minimum fruit on the shelves, and the price may rise – but I don’t think it will be in the long run.”

Lua said that once the transport begins to flow again – “perhaps by the end of next week or perhaps in the next week” – things should “settle”.

Dan Galligan, CEO of Canegrowers, said it would take days to start evaluating a scale and how much crop losses.

He said that the two largest regions for cultivating sugar in the country, Herbert and two cold gatherings-representing about a third of the country’s sugar production-were damaged by the floods.

But 80 % of the sugar produced in Australia is exported, and a lot of local supplies in Australia are grown between Macai and North New South Wales, which was largely outside the flood.

For those farmers who saw “large panels” of small crops that washed or sinking the cane, however, recovery may take up to two years.

He said that in addition to the damage to the railway measuring devices and the infrastructure on which the industry depends.

He said that the sugar cane is the Hardy crop and many farms designed to get machines and homes sitting over the flood water. But the days without strength, the operation of fuel on the generators, the cutting off from the outside world and the continuous sound of the rain was difficult emotionally.

Galigan said: “Ten days of rain, 200 mm of rain every day – shake you.” “He is the defeated people.”