Tauranga residents shop around for cheaper fruit and vegetables as prices soar

Tauranga Budget Advisory Service manager Diane Bruin says the increase in food prices have made it harder for clients trying to stick to a budget. Photo/file

Tauranga residents are feeling the pinch of soaring food prices, with some swapping fresh produce for tinned or frozen, and others buying fruit and vegetables at ethnic stores instead of the supemarket.

Statistics New Zealand announced this week food prices rose 2.2 per cent in the year to February 2017 - the largest annual increase since December 2011.

The increase included a 51 per cent hike in the price of carrots after a poor growing season.

Tauranga woman Chantal Taylor knows where's best to go for a bargain despite rising food prices.

Tauranga shopper Chantal Taylor noticed the increase in fruit and vegetable prices and said although she shops at Pak'n Save, which boasted the lowest of supermarket prices, they were still too expensive for her.

"Quite often I buy fruit and vegetables from the Indian store further along. It's cheaper than the supermarket," she said.

"I find it quite expensive, even at Pak'n Save, and it's meant to be good value there."

Ms Taylor said she often only bought produce in season, which helped keep her budget down.

"For example, I would never buy cherries because they are always very, very expensive. But when it's strawberry season I buy strawberries, when there's lots of bananas I buy bananas," she said.

"I think we are lucky we can afford to buy reasonably healthy food. I feel for families who struggle. It must be so hard."

Tauranga's Ashleigh Jade said leading a vegetarian diet was getting harder.

"Eating five plus a day of fruit and veg costs your soul lately."

She said vegetarians were being hindered, having to substitute fresh produce for legumes and frozen food.

Ms Jade said she has turned to places like Wild Earth Organics or farmers markets and eating only in-season produce.

Tauranga Budget Advisory Service manager Diane Bruin said prices were a worry.

"Especially when carrots are so expensive and they are a basic food item. That's concerning."

Mrs Bruin acknowledged it had been a tough season for growers and said the answer for people with tight budgets, like many of her clients, lay with making different choices such as opting for canned or frozen vegetables instead of fresh.

There were also other options available, such as grating carrots instead of slicing them to make them to go further in meals, and buying tinned tomatoes which were affordable and versatile.

"It's just about making different choices. A lot of it is about planning," Mrs Bruin said.

A Countdown spokesman said while there had been some higher seasonal prices this month, the supermarket's prices were trending downward.

Antoinette Laird, head of external relations for Foodstuffs - the company which owns New World and Pak'n Save - said fruit and vegetable prices were always subject to supply and demand.

She said due to the recent small carrot crop out of Pukekohe carrots had been more expensive, though now that harvesting had begun in Ohakune there would be better pricing in the next month.

Statistics New Zealand found higher prices in all sub-groups except meat, poultry, and fish.

Vegetable prices were up 12 per cent, led by higher prices for carrots, kumara and tomatoes.

Carrot prices were at an all-time high, with 1kg of carrots costing $3.53 in February 2017, compared with $2.34 a year ago.

GROW YOUR OWN

Palmers Garden Centre Welcome Bay assistant manager Alan Smith said all veges were easy to grow and in the long run would equal huge savings.

This time of year was still good to grow lettuce, including spinach and silver beet.

Other vegetables to plant now were broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.

There was the initial cost of setting up a garden, including good soil and compost, but down the track there were huge savings to be made and nutritional value in eating what you grow, he said.