Natural flowering not so natural for growers
Pineapple growers are facing a significant challenge, a challenge brought about by the May weather event. Akin to a natural disaster, the impact isn’t being felt by all, and isn’t evenly spread. However, when 40% of the entire pineapple supply are predicting a 60-90% loss of crop you start to understand why growers are coming together to support and strategise.
Pineapple growing regions in Queensland include North, Central, Wide Bay and Southeast. If you eat fresh pineapple in Australia, it has come from the Sunshine State. Well, it’s usually sunshine but cast your mind back to May this year and it was anything but.
Pineapples are well suited to dry conditions and have evolved to flower annually, often in response to a stressor such as low temperatures or drought however this year it seems the unseasonal warm weather (about 4 degrees warmer than usual) combined with double the average monthly rainfall has triggered a mass natural flowering event, predominantly, but not exclusively, in the SEQ area.
Natural flowering is as its name indicates a ‘usual’ annual natural flowering. On any one year it accounts for approximately 10% of a crop. This year growers are reporting between 60% and 80% of their crop has flowered.
Why is this a problem? Profit for growers lies in being able to force a crop to flower simultaneously to avoid repeated labour harvests. Profit also is driven by market supply and demand and growers can initialise a flowering (which becomes the fruit), using ethylene to take full advantage of gaps in supply.
When a natural flowering occurs, as it has in this case, plants are 5-6 months immature which results in small sized, unsaleable fruit, meaning many growers are now deciding whether the crop is worth taking to market. It also impacts the crop for the next year given the suckers which are usually planted as next years crop are also too small to be used. Additionally, labour costs are blown due to the various natural flowering stages throughout a crop.
For all of us relying on growers for our next Pina Colada, ham and pineapple pizza, delicious snack or table centrepiece, we all have a role to play. The best thing we can do to support pineapples to continue to be grown locally is to buy as many of them as possible early next year. Although the numbers will be down on their usual crop by about half, this will be the only crop growers will have for a year meaning whatever cashflow they can muster will be what they need to rely on to keep them in business.
This event brings with it major challenges ahead for growers and industry but also a significant opportunity for Australian consumers to back our local growers.
