One of Western Australia's largest vegetable growers says soaring production costs mean shoppers need to keep paying high prices for vegetables or risk having only imported frozen produce available in stores.
Monte Farms grows a range of vegetables including lettuce, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach and cabbage on farms north of Perth.
Despite record prices, Luciano Monte said his company had taken the unprecedented step of halving its plantings this year due to ongoing labour shortages and high input costs such as fertiliser and fuel.
"The price we are getting now, that's what we need to survive on," he said.
"[Consumers] need to get used to it or they'll have to get frozen product or food from foreign countries.
"Fertiliser has had a 100 per cent increase, fuel is up by about 70 to 80 per cent, labour has gone through the roof — you're paying up to $34 an hour.
"We were lucky if we got 80 cents to a dollar for lettuce, now we are getting two, three, four dollars for a lettuce, but our production is down by 50 per cent anyway, so you get the same money for less."
Mr Monte said high input costs created too much risk because there was a chance he would be unable to source labour for harvest.
He said despite widespread advertising he could not attract enough staff and needed 20 more people on his farm now.
Prices to remain 'firm'
Wholesaler Chris Hewitt from Quality Produce International said vegetable prices at the Canningvale markets had significantly increased due to unusual demand for West Australian vegetables from the eastern states.
Winter vegetable crops in key growing regions of Queensland and New South Wales were wiped out by floods in May and June, creating a shortage of some lines.
"It was all of your low lying vegetables that were affected," he said.
"Lettuce was the most obvious one, but also broccoli — there was and still is a significant amount of those products going to NSW and Queensland."
Mr Hewitt said since this time last year broccoli had moved from $22 for an iced eight-kilogram box to $40 to $44 wholesale.
He said he expected demand for WA's vegetables from the east would continue until around Christmas time, which would keep prices "firm".
"It takes quite a long time to bounce back, because not only does it wipe out the stock that's ready to harvest, but you have week-long and month-long plantings that are impacted, and things like machinery can't get onto paddocks," Mr Hewitt said.
