Are Avocados Worth The Price Tag?

Mon, Feb 15, 2016

Avocados can be expensive in comparison to other fruits and vegetables

Everybody loves avocados. And if you don’t - admit it - you’ve at least contemplated changing perspective with all the recent hype around one of 2015’s biggest food trends.

Price of fame

The likes of Miranda Kerr and Stephanie Gilmore may claim avocados form the snack fabric of their lives, but for the average health conscious consumer lured by the promise of a nutritional goldmine, a new dilemma lurks….Are they really worth that hefty price tag?

Avocados have never been cheap, for sure, but most states in Australia have seen a 20-40% price hike so far for 2016, with $4 a piece now not an uncommon sight. But how so, when after 20 years of steady growth Australia is now one of the world’s largest avocado producers? Could it be mere coincidence or, for the more cynical among us, an attempt to cash-in big on the #smashedavo #sohotrightnow popularity wave?

Rising demand for avocados

Well, as it turns out, it’s a bit of both (and some more besides). Simple supply and demand economics sets the price of pretty much any commodity - so when you get an increase in demand and a lag in supply, inevitably prices will rise.

But though not native to Australia, avocado trees thrive in our diverse climate, which affords us an industry that boasted a 68,500 tonne output in 2015. With growers in most states and fruit available year round, it would seem safe to assume some protection from price volatility.

Avodaco squeeze

Mode of production and logistics do create expensive problems though. With a seven year lead-in to tree maturity and fruiting, it’s not as if producers can respond immediately to a spike in demand, even if they wanted to .

For all growers, there is always unpredictability in weather conditions that can see to fluctuations in harvests year to year. There’s also a short window between harvesting and ripe-to-perfection, coupled with a high tendency for damage to the fruit during transit and display (yeah, don’t squeeze it unless you’re gonna buy it) which results in greater losses (noooooo!) compared with hardier fruits like apples for example.

All of this leads to a pricier encounter for consumers deciding how much to part with (or realistically what else to go without) to get a regular intake of these nutrient-hording heavyweights.

Avocado love

In the end it probably comes down to just how much you enjoy eating avocados, alongside the knowledge you are benefiting from their nutritional uber-value that is. There is now growing evidence to suggest that the good fats in avocados actually help us access beneficial nutrients from other foods too, meaning that ‘part of a balanced diet’ business really does mean something when it comes to these wonder fruits of warmer climes.

To help you decide how many or few need to form your own snack fabric, here’s a few simple recipe ideas for enjoying avocados in all their (relatively unadulterated) glory. Over to you.

Want more?

Browse Australian.Kitchen for more recipes with avocado.