Cyclone Narelle destroys banana crops, fresh food growers hit hard

Fruit and vegetable producers in one of Western Australia's key food growing regions are counting the cost of Cyclone Narelle, with one banana grower reporting more than 80 per cent of his crop has been destroyed.

Packing the punch of a category two system, Narelle tore through the Gascoyne town of Carnarvon — which produces fresh food for domestic and export markets valued at almost $1.5 billion a year.

The cyclone had already caused widespread damage as a category four system further north in Exmouth, where gusts of about 200 kilometres per hour damaged homes and tore through the tourist town's airport.

Banana grower Les Ball believes he has lost most of his crop, despite the cyclone being much weaker than expected.

"But it's bad enough to create quite a bit of havoc with the bananas," he said.

While a small portion of his crop will be salvageable, the vast majority will not be fit for sale.

The chair of the Sweeter Banana Co-Operative which represents more than half of Carnarvon's banana growers, Mr Ball is far from alone in his experience.

"I've spoken to a few growers … and there seems to be quite a bit of damage around the place," Mr Ball said.

While growers like Mr Ball deal with the devastation of losing the majority of their crop, they also face a clean-up they expect could take weeks.

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The massive damage to WA's banana crops comes hot on the heels of much of Queensland's fruit growing industry suffering losses from extreme weather on the opposite side of the country, including from the same cyclone, which travelled across the entire span of the country.

Queensland growers warned the multiple disasters would likely lead to a lose-lose situation for both producers and consumers, with the possibility of supply shortages in local shops and supermarkets.

But Mr Ball remains hopeful it won't come to that.

"There'll be no lack of bananas in the shops, there'll be plenty of them there to go round," he said.

He's also remaining upbeat about the industry's recovery from the cyclone, saying while there'll be some suffering for growers over the next year, the impact shouldn't last into the long-term.

"The productivity of the bananas, that's definitely going to take a whack, but bananas aren't the only game up here, we're sort of lucky in the Gascoyne, there's a lot of crops we can grow, so we just sort of diversify a bit and keep moving on.

"It's just the nature of the business … they don't sneak up on you these things, we know they're coming and you sort of just prepare, and come out the next morning, and have a look and see what the damage is.

"The next year is going to be a bit light on, but after that we should be back into production again, and back to the happy days."