Australia’s ‘avo-lanche’ forces farmers to look to Asia and UK for sales

While diners in central London are forking out £15 for smashed avocado on toast, Australia has an avo glut and is desperately looking for markets to offload the fruit.

Inflation and widespread flooding have sent the price of many fruit and vegetables soaring in Australia — but not for the avocado. There is such an oversupply of the creamy green fruit that farmers have labelled it an “avo-lanche”.

The cost of a single avocado has dropped as low as A$1 (US$0.70), about one-tenth the price of a head of lettuce and less than half the fruit’s five-year average price.

Australians are expected to eat almost 5kg of avocados per person this year, a 26 per cent rise 2021, according to Rabobank analyst Pia Piggott. Despite that, there are still far too many avocados.

Rabobank expects avocado production to rise 40 per cent to 173,000 tonnes by 2026 as farmers planted more and more trees to cash in on the once lucrative fruit.

Australia exported 4 per cent of the avocados it produced last year, or about 3,100 tonnes, mainly to Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

But the glut has forced the industry to look elsewhere for buyers. The shift in strategy will put it in direct competition with Mexican and Peruvian producers, which dominate the global market. New Zealand is also adding to the export congestion, as it used to sell most of its avocados to Australia.

John Tyas, head of the Avocados Australia trade body, said that the industry needed to break into larger markets, including Japan. Tyas added that talks with India were taking place and that there was even demand from the UK for consignments.

Over the long term, he hoped that South Korea and China, which has applied punitive tariffs on Australian goods such as barley and wine, will open up to avocados.

Until then, the industry is urging Australians to “ave an Avo” as farmers sell their fruit below cost. At trendy cafés in Sydney and Melbourne, the prized fruit has been reduced to a substitute for more expensive salad ingredients such as leafy greens.

For growers including Brad Rodgers, the “avo-lanche” was not a shock.

The Western Australian farmer planted avocado trees five years ago on his property outside Manjimup, three hours south of Perth, during the boom in domestic demand.

However, as he drove around the area, he realised that all his neighbours had also planted avocado trees. “Everyone else had the same idea. We’ve seen this coming for a while,” said Rodgers of the surfeit of avocados.

A former financial adviser who also grows wine grapes and black truffles, Rodgers said his avocado trees may not be as lucrative as he had hoped, but he did not regret planting them.

“It’s a privilege to grow it. It is a beautiful fruit,” he said. “Everything tastes better with guacamole.”