When iceberg lettuce was selling for $12 a head, Australians joked about trading the leafy green for harbour-side mansions and luxury cars.
The price hike was enough to make fast food chain KFC do the unthinkable: add cabbage to the lettuce in its chicken burgers.
The cost of the salad staple was driven up by complex factors including drought, followed by labour and supply chain shortages, floods and the Russia-Ukraine war limiting exports of fertiliser.
While the price is back down to $2, a planning expert says the great lettuce inflation of 2022 should be a lesson for future Australian food production as urban sprawl causes tension over land.
Tamara Prentice, an agricultural land use planning manager at the NSW Department of Primary Industries, said lettuce and other leafy vegetables were often grown in peri-urban areas because they were highly perishable and difficult to transport.
But urban planning rules were yet to catch up with advancing agricultural technology like the use of hothouses, which could be up to 60 times more land and water efficient, Ms Prentice said.
“The industry predictions are that this is going to be the way of the future, considering the increasingly volatile climate,” she told the Planning Institute of Australia’s rural, regional and remote conference in late March.
“As production systems adopt new technologies, ag is increasingly looking like an industrial-style development.
“This results in land use conflict when residents in these rural areas expect to see cows grazing, rather than large hothouses.
“Ensuring planning frameworks have sufficiently modern and accurate definitions can enable different types of agricultural systems to be best located to try and minimise these conflicts.”
Growing vegetables near urban areas offered many opportunities for food security and sustainability, as transporting products significantly contributes to carbon emissions.
“Having production occur close to consumers also reduces the risk of food shortages in times of disaster or pandemics due to supply chain disruptions,” Ms Prentice said.
She said broadscale cropping, including grains, cereals and fibre, would continue to be an important part of the nation’s agricultural production, particularly with the adoption of regenerative practices.
“Without this component, there would be an impact on the ability of the world to feed itself.
“If we can minimise land use conflict, as well as fragmentation of these lands, these industries will continue to provide staple products needed to feed and clothe our populations.”
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