-- father of 11 month old, prior to Tropical Cyclone Larry
About a year ago I had a chat with a mother friend of mine about bananas. Every mother knows that bananas are an indespensible food with a baby or toddler; it comes in it's own disposable wrapping, requires no preparation, is easy to store, and is universally adored by young children. In this discussion, my friend proposed that bananas were a single market good; unlike other food, when the price went up, people would not substitute a different fruit. I denied it. Surely people would just eat apples, or mandarins, or grapes instead of paying exhorbitant prices for bananas. Little did I know that within six months I would get to witness the result of a dramatic decrease in the supply of bananas.
Australia has several banana growing regions and does not allow the import of bananas. The largest and most productive region is on the Queensland coast, centered on Innisvale. Innisvale happens to be the location where Tropical Cyclone Larry, a category 5 cyclone, hit land in March, 2006. It decimated the banana crop that was just about to be harvested, and the plants that would be producing bananas through the Australian winter. Almost immediately, the price of bananas doubled. The price has since risen to $15 wombats per kilogram, five times its pre-cyclone price.
Being the mother of a toddler, eliminating bananas from the diet complete is not an option, so we ration them. A single banana currently costs between $2.50 and $3.00 wombats. We regularly spend $15 on bananas a week.
Since Larry, the price of bananas has been a constant topic of conversation between me and my mother, who lives in Costa Rica. She constantly marvels that anyone would pay so much, and when she visited Melbourne recently (when the price was a mere $10 wombats/KG) she asked the green grocer about it, who replied that you would think that people would cut back, but parents just keep buying them (myself included).
In July the Australian goverment announced that the consumer price index had risen 1.6 percent for the quarter from March through June. This figure was higher than expected, and economists claimed the rising price of petrol and the cost of bananas were largely to blame.
When my mom bought 6 bananas for 76 colones today in Costa Rica (about 20 Australian cents, or 3.3 cents each) I started to see just how absurd the price is in Melbourne. In contrast, the typical Costa Rican earns enough money for a full day of work to purchase four bananas at Melbourne prices.
The good news is that the price of bananas in Australia is predicted to start falling this month.
