The Price of Fruit

Growing my own fruit and vegetables has certainly given me an appreciation of the work involved to harvest even one piece of fruit. It shocks me to see the very minimal prices that we can buy fruit for at times, I wonder if the grower is actually making anything out of it at all. Yesterday I saw a roadside stall offering organic apricots for $4 a kilo...what a a bargain. The major fruit and veg shop in Orange was selling non organic apricots for $9.95 a kilo, I wonder how much the grower got for them. Bananas were a ridiculous 99cents a kilo. While this is good news for people shopping it is not a real reflection of the reality of growing things. The bananas would have to be transported a long distance as well. They were quite small so I imagine didn't fit the criteria of the major supermarkets.
The fruit we grow is priceless, many, many hours of maintenance, pest prevention and watching involved but it is so satisfying in terms of taste and the knowledge that it is chemical free, and hasn't travelled anywhere except from the branch to our mouths. There will be ripe plums today.
I have a busy day planned in the garden, it is quite cool, excellent gardening weather, I plan to weed and mulch the rose gardens, plant some more  vegetable seeds for late summer crops and continue to mow. 

Comments

Linda Woodrow said…
I really agree with you - food is too cheap. I know I have the luxury of being able to say so, because I grow so much of ours, but I still think that if we seriously expect primary producers to be able to produce good food and take care of the environment at the same time, we need to be willing to make it possible to have a livelihood doing so. Otherwise you get soul-less agribusiness and exploitation of workers in countries with less health, safety, and environmental protection than ours. And it really costs so very very little extra compared to phone or mortgage or petrol or all the other bills we take for granted.
December 18, 2010 at 3:02 PM
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