Potential floods in upcoming days could hurt the hip pocket of Victorian families as new research shows supermarket shelf prices are set to rise with wet weather being one major factor.
Deakin University's Institute for Health Transformation has collected data since 2019 to monitor prices in supermarkets in Victoria and across Australia with a view to inform public health policies on keeping healthy diets affordable.
Deakin University research fellow and dietitian Christina Zorbas said natural disasters, and the rising costs of running a farm to deal with disasters such as floods, could contribute to unhealthy diets as consumers resort to lower-priced, processed foods.
"We probably never really anticipated so many crises which hit the world that would affect food prices, but probably should have seen it coming," Dr Zorbas said.
She said while it was hard to account for everything, disruptions from COVID and fuel shortages along with major weather events like floods were all "part of the equation".
Dr Zorbas said policies that gave subsidies to growers were needed until the pricing crisis was over.
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"It's quite easy for [large supermarkets] to keep the price down on soft drinks and packaged and processed stuff that is not part of healthy diet recommendations," she said.
"But it is much harder for them to keep the price down like on fruits and veggies because there's so much that goes on in the background when you factor in how much those products are going to cost farmers and then how much they can sell them to the consumer."
The study showed that prices for fruit and vegetables grew 7 per cent on average across the board.
In 2020, a head of lettuce cost $2.50, but data from this year has shown prices as high at $5, while broccoli jumped from $5.90 to $11.90 a kilogram.
Junk food recorded the lowest price rise at 1pc.
On the land, farmer Andrew Waston, Kensel Green, Bungowannah, NSW, has spent more than $10,000 a week over multiple weeks to move stock off his property as access becomes limited due to the floods.
He said farmers needed to be aware of major weather events to protect produce and livestock.
"We got a feeling about six months ago that with Dartmouth Dam and Lake Hume rising rapidly, there was a flood situation coming," he said.
"So we started to put feelers out there to see if we had to move some stock, asking if we had to do it early, or if we were to do it late, so we moved early.
"We also just moved 400 cows and calves last week for agistment."
Mr Watson said he moved two thirds of his cattle away, leaving 150 head at his home base and a few yearlings to feed on high ground if flooding became worse in the Kiewa Valley and near the Murray River.
He said some areas of the high country had been bare of grass due to cattle stationed there for six weeks because of the flood danger.
"The cattle sector is strong, so if you do sell you're going to get rewarded, but we are cow breeders so we're reluctant to sell breeding females and we are just trying to retain everything, much like you'd do in a drought and look after your cattle," he said.
But Mr Watson said while it was important for farmers to be proactive in times like these, government bodies had to come to the party to ensure everyone benefited from farmer to consumer.
"We've covered ourselves as best we can but the fear of the unknown is there... we have a lot of skin in the game - this is our livelihood," he said.
He said it was important communication about natural disasters like floods was relayed to communities as quickly as possible so farmers could be more assured in their decision making.
North-west cropper Marty Colbert, Nhill, said lentils would be hard hit.
"Until a week ago our crops were once-in-a-lifetime, but with the last 50 millimetres of rain that we've had, our beans are definitely an absolute mess," he said.
"Some of our other crops haven't been impacted at all, but lentils have definitely been heavily affected and I'd be confident to say that to the south of Nhill about 50 per cent of the potential lentil yields have been wiped out."
Mr Colbert said that those who produced faba beans would be hit the hardest.
"Even those farmers that have put a lot of due diligence into those lentils with good fungicide applications will have been knocked down in half simply due to the major weather," he said.
But he said pulse programs were a small part of any operation and positives remained for croppers.
"The wheat and canola has been well set up with a really good July, August and September making it look really phenomenal, and so is the barley," he said.
If further wet weather was to come, Mr Colbert said yields for Victorian croppers would be expected to be "through the roof".
"I've been walking through wheat crops that have got potential of well above six tonnes and if we have a mild spring there'll be definitely some eight-tonne wheat crops which is unheard of," he said.
Supply and demand balances and damage done to NSW crops will also contribute to significant prices for Victorian croppers.
Mr Colbert said these factors would have grain prices "shift in what we would call the right direction."
