It’s enough to make a brunch enthusiast weep: the sight of thousands of avocados dumped and left to rot in northern Queensland.
That was the sight that greeted Jan De Lai, a resident of Atherton, at her local tip – piles and piles of the fruit poured onto the ground by big trucks.
“Truckloads of avocados are being dumped in Atherton! Surely, they could be used for animal fodder or used to make oil? Poor farmers,” she posted on Facebook.
But according to those selfsame farmers, the reason is oversupply: between hundreds of new avocado trees being planted when they were trendy; the closures of restaurants during COVID-19 lockdowns; the impacts of the NSW and Queensland floods; and other factors, it’s become cheaper to just throw away low-grade avocados than to pay the costs associated with selling them, Atherton grower Jim Kochi told 7 News.
“The cost of putting that stuff in a package, including the labour and the cost of packaging and the cost of transport is just not worthwhile.
“It doesn’t pay to put the money into packing the fruit or to pay someone the freight costs to send it down to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne,” he said.
On the plus side, with avocado sales so low, we should be seeing a lot more new homeowners.
