AU: Making a buck from bananas

Making a buck is suddenly very hard again for banana growers. The shortage caused by Cyclone Yasi last year pushed prices in the supermarket to $17/kilo, but there's a massive oversupply now and they are as cheap as chips. Growers on the north coast of NSW are struggling with other problems as well. They blame the supermarkets for preferring big bananas and those grown in QLD which have less skin blemishes. Ron Gray, president of the of the Coffs Harbour banana growers, says prices have plummeted in the supermarket and he's struggling to make a living. "After Cyclone Yasi there were less than 100,000 cartons a week coming onto the market.

"Now there are 800,000 cartons and if they had the transport, growers in NSW and Queensland could have put more than a million cartons on the market. "My income for last week was $600. Out of that I had $400 in labour costs, which doesn't leave much for myself or anything else." Param Git Sidhu (known locally as Sid Sidhu) says the supermarkets aren't keen on the smaller-sized fruit from his region. "Supermarkets prefer customers to buy large bananas which weigh more, so if they want four bananas that ends up weighing two kilos instead of one."

He says Coffs Harbour bananas are tastier because they have a higher sugar content than bananas grown elsewhere, but the skin is often blemished because they stay on the tree twice as long as Queensland bananas, which ripen quicker in the tropics. He wants the supermarkets to work with banana growers in his region. "It's an Australian product that should be marketed well". Ron Gray doesn't see anything changing for the better soon. Growers are moving from the cyclone areas in Queensland to the Atherton Tablelands and he's not sure what impact that will have on supply.

Source: abc.net.au