I wrote about the Australian floods about a week ago. Since then in Queensland people have had to be evacuated from their homes, farms have been flooded and roads closed. The video footage from the 28th December really shows the devastation. BBC News reports that Brent Finlay, president of the farmers' lobby group AgForce, said the floods could cause up to $403m (£261m) in damage to agricultural crops. A day later this estimate was raised for the total cost of the damage to top AU$1bn (£650m), including losses of sunflower and cotton crops.
Ausfoodnews further reports that the area of the flooding is vital to Australian food supply and that fruit and vegetable prices could rise by as much as to 50 per cent.
Ausfoodnews reports that: "Affected farmers report that both summer and winter crops have been destroyed, with many hectares of freshly planted grain, vegetable and fruit crops under water. The damage is expected to increase the cost of groceries such as melons, tomatoes, mangoes, and bananas from today. Farming lobby group AgForce estimates 50 per cent of Queensland’s crops have been damaged by the heavy rain, significantly reducing the yield. Added to this, the flooding has cut off many roads, causing problems transporting food to markets...The floods in Queensland come only two weeks after drenching rain across Victoria ruined hundreds of millions of dollars of farmers’ crops, which had already put pressure on food prices.Cherries, wheat, barley, canola and wine grapes were impacted by the drought-breaking rains across Victoria and the other eastern states earlier in December."
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