Queensland provides the winter production of strawberries for Australia, with the season running from May to October each year. According to the Queensland Strawberry Growers Association a warmer winter has dramatically slowed production and supply is down by as much as 35 per cent.
News site abc.net.au reports that the association was hoping cooler weather would bring on a flush of fruit in the last eight weeks of the season.
Compared to this time last year, 30 per cent less sweet red fruit is being picked in John Allen's strawberry fields at Beerwah on the Sunshine Coast, and he suspects he knows why.
"The weather, environmental conditions, nothing else," Mr Allen said.
"With the heat and an unseasonably warm autumn and winter, the fruit hasn't cropped."
It is a situation he said was unprecedented in his 30 years of growing strawberries.
There are about 150 strawberry growers in Queensland, producing between 6,000 and 15,000 tonnes, or 60 million punnets, of strawberries in an average season.
For Mr Allen, this year's drop in production is not all bad.
"At the moment I think lower supply is good. I think prices have been higher, we haven't gone below $2.00 yet.
