Farm Floods Will Hit Food Supplies And Drive Up Prices. Farmers Need Help To Adapt As Weather Extremes Worsen

Oct 21, 2022

By Elisabeth Vogel

Some of Victoria's most important agricultural regions are among the areas worst hit by severe floods inundating the state this week.

This may lead to food shortages and higher supermarket prices for milk, fruit, vegetables and other farm products. Indeed, about 20% of Victoria's milk is produced in flood-affected regions, and millions of liters now may be lost.

For farmers, the floods will certainly be devastating. Over the last five years, Australian farm businesses have faced a relentless string of extreme events, from drought to unprecedented bushfires.

Now, floods are destroying crops, drowning livestock or damaging equipment and infrastructure. Indirect impacts also flow from road closures and electricity outages that can severely interrupt farm operations, damaging products and harming animal welfare.

Farmers face a multitude of challenges in future. Climate change is projected to lead to more frequent severe floods, as well as other climate extremes such as heatwaves and drought. How do farmers adapt to these changes and how can governments support them?

How floods damage farms

Some of the areas hardest-hit by current flooding are in northern Victoria, including Shepparton, Rochester and Echuca—some of Victoria's most important growing regions.

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Video: Designing a Robotic Berry Picker

Since blackberries must be harvested by hand, the process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. To support a growing blackberry industry in Arkansas, food science associate professor Renee Threlfall is collaborating with mechanical engineering assistant professor Anthony Gunderman to develop a mechanical harvesting system. Most recently, the team designed a device to measure the force needed to pick a blackberry without damaging it. The data from this device will help inform the next stage of development and move the team closer to the goal of a fully autonomous robotic berry picker. The device was developed by Gunderman, with Yue Chen, a former U of A professor now at Georgia Tech, and Jeremy Collins, then a U of A undergraduate engineering student. To determine the force needed to pick blackberries without damage, the engineers worked with Threlfall and Andrea Myers, then a graduate student.