Major supermarkets are set to face several weeks of baby leaf shortages as some of Australia's largest vegetable growers recover from storm and flood damage.
Close to half of Australia's baby leaf salad crops are grown in Gippsland in eastern Victoria, which has been plagued by cold conditions, storms and flooding this winter. Lindenow vegetable grower Andrew Bulmer is one of the largest baby leaf producers in the country and exports lettuce, baby spinach, baby salad leaf, and broccoli. Mr Bulmer said he and neighbouring properties had suffered significant losses this year during the difficult weather conditions. "After a recent flood it sort of knocked out a couple of our plantings we had in the ground," he said. "We're probably looking at about 50 per cent of our production is missing for about six to seven weeks." Mr Bulmer said six of the top 10 salad producers in Australia were based in Gippsland, which meant that any significant weather events affected national production. "They've all been affected by rain events so they haven't been able to stick to their planting schedules," he said. "Or they may have had weather that's damaged their crops or it has just generally been cold, so things are not growing quite as quickly as they usually would." Mr Bulmer said supermarkets would likely face shortages of baby leaf products for the next six to seven weeks. But he said there should be no change to pricing for consumers because most baby leaf products were pre-packaged. "Most of it is sold in packets in the supermarket and they're all on set pricing," he said. "And what you get in your pubs, clubs and restaurants seems to be pretty stable pricing, so it won't vary too much."
