Major Australian lettuce crisis lesson for the future

In Australian supermarkets, the price of lettuce has been pushed up by complex factors, including drought, followed by labor and supply shortages, flooding and the war between Russia and Ukraine that limits fertilizer exports. Although the price has now dropped back to $2, a planning expert says the big lettuce inflation of 2022 should be a lesson for future Australian food production as urban sprawl is causing tension across land. According to Tamara Prentice, planning manager at the NSW Department of Primary Industries, lettuce and other leafy greens were often grown in areas on the outskirts of towns because they are highly perishable and difficult to transport. "The sector's predictions are that this will be the way of the future, given the increasingly erratic climate. As new technologies are used in cultivation, agriculture and horticulture increasingly resemble an industrial development. This leads to conflicts on land use when ...