Following a devastating start to the season due to abnormally wet weather, prolonged sunny spells are seeing Sunshine Coast growers picking an abundance of strawberries.
Adrian Schultz from the Strawberry Growers Association says it means the price of a punnet will drop to around $2 at most supermarkets.
“The beginning of the season was very rough and affected the crop, but now after four or five weeks of reasonable sort of weather things are looking good plans have recovered, plenty of flowers, plenty of fruit and I think we’ll have really good production over the next four weeks,” he says.
Shoppers are being encouraged to snap up as much of the fruit as possible to help local farmers recoup their losses from earlier in the year.
“We probably would have been below $2 a punnet by now in any normal season but we would have recouped those set up costs in May, June and July well this year you virtually had no income from that period of time,” Mr Schultz says.
“A lot of farmers are really looking for consumer support to get out and get the strawberries at a good price. We have to actually start planting next year’s crop now. We actually have to start paying deposits on plants for next season.”
Image: AAP
