Some say we are the biggest staple food producers, hence no worry on food supplies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_aWSe6VZ_4
But we import 95% of our rice. And they are in low supply now.
https://www.grainmart.in/news/rice-prices-surge-globally-ami…
What about wheat ? Do we grow plenty of them ? Pasta shelves still empty at my local stores.
There's no 'cheap pasta' around my store but there are plenty of more expensive brands (San Remo branded with spelt, quinoa based pasta for $4 a box) and there was also a lot of fresh pasta in the fridges.
If you're super desperate: https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=B07GBMPJC1%7CB01GA3IYEY%7CB07G…
It's in stock at my local. All brands but only in macaroni, big spirals and spaghetti varieties.
Mix flour and water until you get a dough. Roll out and cut up. Boom: pasta.
Flour’s out of stock as well though ;)
Hmm yeah it really does vary everywhere. The last three stores I went into (over two weeks) have all had flour. But only one had pasta.
Both supermarkets I went to this afternoon had no flour or toilet paper whatsoever
Oops! Replied to the wrong thread.
Not really.
I’ve literally been doing it all week. Yes, really.
I'm finding it easier to find pasta than flour.
Probably same customer as in this story
https://www.9news.com.au/national/toilet-paper-adelaide-supe…
If you get into Aldi early there are lots of 65 and 85cents pasta avaliable
I must be living in the right area. Pasta, toilet paper the whole lot are in stock. Except full cream long life milk as no one is touching the light.
Same. Not a single shelf was empty at my local. Plenty of products reduced for quick sale too. For example, 10kg beef mince for $4. The organic, grass-fed ones were reduced to $3 for 500g. Roast chook were $5.
Haven't had a look at the long-life milk though as the kids won't touch that stuff. But lots of fresh milk reduced to 70% off. We have milk powder as a back up if we ever run out.
The UHT stuff is good for making Yogurt because you don’t need to do the sterilisation process.
Australia produces a lot of food, and we export a lot of it.
Because we only have 25m people, even in drought years we produce many, many more calories than we consume. And pasta is made from wheat which we grew around 15 million tonnes last year in a bad drought.
Any shortages on the shelves are about distribution, not production.
That said, rice is a crop that swings wildly in production depending on water availability, and last year we only produced about half what we consumed (and quite a bit of that was exported, as we eat a fair bit of jasmine and basmati but grow japonica).
The real concern is going to be in the developing world, where big rice exporters like India are impacted by COVID lock down laws, and countries like Vietnam have halted exports. We'll be fine, but I wouldn't like to be on a tight budget in the Philippines this year. Doubly so if households in China decide they better stock up in case there are supply issues.
There are good stats on primary production produced by the government, though they are focused on farm economics, not food supply/demand:
https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/agricu…
just have to wait for some more to grow again
My coles is having more and more back in stock. It started with just some "smart" branded stuff. Now I saw the coles branded stuff slowly creeping back in.
My woolies only had some brand I'd never heard of before… and risoni… no one wants the risoni! I got 3 packs of San Remo macaroni off Amazon the other week - I just do a quick search of staples I need to see what's available every couple of days when I think of it. The only thing I'm struggling for now is flour, out of plain and SR, only about a kilo of 00 flour. I use a fair bit of flour, but not enough to warrant buying the big 12 kilo bags I'm seeing around - let alone have somewhere to store it!
We apparently do produce more wheat than we need for local purposes (had half an ear on a show on the ABC yesterday regarding grain security, especially regarding rice, wheat etc and whether in light of CV19, we should be eschewing water greedy crops such as cotton and redirecting that effort into additional food crops) and we also have enough to export a great deal of wheat too. I'm under the impression that it will be the same as the toilet paper fiasco and once people calm TF down and realise the apocalypse is not upon them or that they'll be forced to exist in a pasta-less wasteland for all of eternity (or they get sick of eating pasta every night), then shopper habits will start to revert back to usual habits. In the meantime, there appear to be those stores here or there, either due to unique customer demands of the area, good planning or good luck, that have become an oasis in the desert for hard to find items. I suggest you have a look at smaller independent grocers like IGA, Drake's supermarkets etc as we've found those types of stores (in our area at least) to have better supplies of most things than the bigger supermarkets like Coles or Woolies and sometimes even Aldi and they seem to receive stock more often as well (so they might not have as many units of a product as a bigger supermarket but they seem to be doing a pretty good job of keeping stock levels replenished every day so people have a chance to get at least one or two packets of what they need, I've found the same goes for things like TP, flour, rice, sugar, etc).
That being said, you could always make your own, with the caveat being that you can access flour and you don't mind a bit of effort to make it yourself.
Plenty of pasta at the Costco Docklands
Just went into a local Aldi tonight stocks of pasta were pretty much back to normal. Been the same for last 2 weeks.