The 2022 eastern Australia floods were one of the nation's worst recorded flood disasters, with a series of floods that occurred from February to April in South East Queensland, the Wide Bay–Burnett and parts of coastal New South Wales.
"Australia’s growing and production regions experienced some relief over their winter months bringing back some “normality” in our production and supply of fresh vegetables, though transitioning in to our warmer summer months. Unfavourable very wet weather conditions (including various flood affected regions) are once again hampering the “normality” in our Australian growing and production regions," said Kees Versteeg, Sales & Business Development at QualiPac.
Earlier this season severe wet weather conditions and localised flooding, severely affected QualiPac's vegetable growing and production regions, with planted crops and top soils washed away. Vegetable crops not washed away struggled to survive when flood waters receded, these unfavourable weather conditions also created disruptions in vegetable planting schedules, creating production and harvesting gaps affecting availability of vegetable crops for the company's domestic and overseas markets.
"No one pays the grower for the losses incurred when crops are washed away and top soils need to be repaired preparing for new plantings. These losses will somehow need to be recovered further down the track with the next viable and marketable crops. Labour shortages and our 2nd globally highest labour cost are still hot topics here in Australia," said Kees.
Onions
The severe wet weather conditions - which resulted in losing various early onion crops - means a later than usual onion harvest and QualiPac have only just recently commenced their onion harvest.
"The lack of and high cost of labour, high input costs and various early onion crops lost due to unfavourable weather conditions, have all added up to very high production costs which we regretfully need to pass on further in our supply chain. Overall domestic onion production volumes seem to be way below previous season(s) and this is also reflected in our domestic market by strong and high domestic wholesale and retail prices not seen for a long time.
"Opportunistic importers/traders have been (and I believe still are) importing cheaper onions from overseas (including from The Netherlands), which one way or the other will find their way to our major domestic retailers shelves and most likely be disguised and misleadingly sold to our Australian consumers as “Australian” onions at the higher end priced Australian domestic onions." 
"Although we know that weather conditions are unpredictable, we did not expect this season’s weather conditions to be that unpredictable bringing along more rains, hampering the majority of our Australian vegetable growing and production regions. The Canadian poet Brian Brett once said: “Farming is a profession of hope!”. We always hope for better growing & production conditions. We always hope to deliver the freshest and best vegetables to the consumers in Australia and to the consumers in our overseas markets. And we always hope that in that process we will be paid fairly and profitable so we can invest in growing, producing and delivering our next vegetable crop."
When asked about yields Kees said he honestly would not know the answer to this because until such time we can control the weather, Mother Nature will continue to work in unpredictable ways!
Storage quality
"With post-harvest processes which are appropriate to the conditions being followed, we should not experience any (storage) quality issues. Because the demand for good quality onions is strong, we also do not anticipate the need for keeping onions in storage too long and most of the onions will be sent into our domestic and overseas markets as soon as the proper processes of drying and curing have passed after harvest.
Onion markets
"There are still some southern Australian old season onions around and they are still being supplied - albeit in smaller and declining volumes - out of the southern Australian growers’ storage facilities (southern Australian grown onions tend to go in to storage each year around May/Jun from where supply will continue until such time these are all sold).
"This season though it seems volumes stored and available from the southern Australian growers have either been down or more has been exported to oversees markets compared to previous seasons. The new Queensland onion season has experienced harvest delays due to unfavourable weather conditions earlier this season and has affected supply and demand in our domestic market. As a positive result, this has pushed onion prices up. This has created a favourable condition for Queensland new season onions growers to make up for past losses, cover this season’s extra growing, production and delivery costs, being paid a fair and hopefully profitable price and hopefully there will be some money left to allocate to and invest in their next 2023 onion season."
For more information:
Kees Versteeg
QUALIPAC PTY LTD
Tel: +61 (0)488 494 911
kees@qualipac.com.au
www.qualipac.com.au