Central Queensland fruit grower predicts mixed seasonal outlook for 2023 season

The Groves family from Groves Grown Tropical Fruit located at Bungundarra near Yeppoon, predominantly grows avocados, lychees and mangoes on around 202 hectares (500 acres).

While David Groves expected the several varieties of avocados grown on the property to be a "ripper crop", the same couldn't be said for lychees or mangoes.

He said the volume of mangoes was likely to be reduced significantly compared to last year, however the quality was expected to be up.

He said even though the fruit could be susceptible to heatwaves and sunburn, it was not comparable to the damage from heavy rain during the 2022 growing season.

"About this time last year we had about 300mm of rain, which put a lot of disease pressure on the fruit and a lot of downgrading and then we had another couple of 100mm while we were picking so we had major quality issues," he said.

Mr Groves said while mango flowering had started out extremely weak, flowering had improved as of late, meaning although some of the fruit would be later than usual, the outlook was looking better.

"It will still be a down year, but not as down as we first thought," he said.

The mango varieties looking the best were more tropical including Nam Dok Mai and Honey Golden, followed by an "ok" crop for Bowens, whereas varieties such as RD2s and Keitt were looking poor.

He said the lychee crop would be extremely poor this year, with the Groves looking at less than 20 per cent of what they produced in a normal year.

He said both the mango and lychee trees had suffered from having a warm winter, and not enough "chilling units".

While he said mangoes didn't get cold enough in relation to the yearly average to be sufficiently stressed out to produce a good crop, the lychees "absolutely didn't get cold enough" and were suffering as a result.

"The tiny little stalks were trying to flower but it just didn't get cold enough and they changed their mind and aborted the flower."

Mr Groves said while his area experienced a couple of cool days in May, there was never saw a frost and it barely dropped below 15 degrees, whereas normally evenings would drop to around 10 to 8 degrees.

"With the lychees we've just had a few really good years in a row so you've got to expect some years will be down, that's just part of life," he said.

While the strong avocado production was a great sign, Mr Groves was worried that if the rest of the country also experienced a bumper crop, avocados would likely come up below cost of production.

"The way production has been going up it could be a pretty dismal year for prices, but we'll see, we've just to get greater demand," he said.

In terms of yield, Mr Groves said last year's season was "a bit down", however prices were up a little due to reduced production, whereas the season before was great.

He said the best thing about avocados was that if the price dropped too much he could always halt picking and wait as avocados could hang on the tree after they matured, "unlike lychees and mangoes that will just fall off if you are a couple of days too late".

While this meant growers could play the market a little, often "everyone ends up doing the same thing".

Stopping the harvest momentarily was something he had to do last year for avocados, since prices got below $15 per tray (about 20 to 30 avocados), meaning he was only getting $0.50 per piece.

He said a tray usually costed him around $15 to $16 to produce, which if you took into account annual costs for looking after the orchard, was probably more like $20 to $22 per tray.

"You might be able to do that for a couple of year, but you can't take those prices for a decade."

All that being said, he indicated that at the time avocados were still appearing in supermarkets for around $1.80, meaning farmers were definitely not the ones profiting.

Mr Groves said it was these fluctuations in production and prices which had promoted them to grow a range of varieties and different fruit crops.

While their bread and butter were mangoes, lychees and avocados, the Groves also have some crops of more niche fruit such as carambola (start fruit), loquats, and dragon fruit.

Around 150 carambola trees had just recently been picked, with fruit sent to market around August

He said while it was a good harvest, market returns had fallen, which he attributed to higher interest rates.