Pineapples are selling for record high prices and those in the industry say consumers need to get used to paying more for the Australian-grown product.
A lack of supply has pushed prices to record highs with the fruit being sold for as much as $14 each and an average of $6 at most supermarkets.
Sunshine Coast fruit shop owner Colin Erbacher said finding pineapples to sell at affordable prices had been difficult since a premature flowering event over summer.
"It's the dearest I've ever seen them in my life," Mr Erbacher said.
He said he tried to keep prices at his fruit shop to about 50 per cent more than usual and avoided passing on "ridiculous" wholesale prices to the customer.
"At the markets it was $6 to $8 a pineapple. We left them there, they weren't mature enough either, too green," he said.
He said maintaining consumer consumption of the fruit was vital to future availability.
"Prices need to stay up a little bit higher to pay for all the fertiliser and all the fuel," he said.
"The next generation won't grow them if there's no money in it and there won't be any pineapples down the track if we don't pay a little bit more."
Warning to consumers
Yeppoon farmer Barry Brooks said the shortage was helping farmers get paid properly.
"The prices have doubled for this year compared to last year, but they were basically at or below production costs before," Mr Brooks said.
"The higher prices should compensate for the lack of fruit we have and we hope that it will equalise our incomes."
He said prices would come down from the record highs but consumers needed to be willing to pay more than what they were used to.
"If they want to continue to eat pineapples they have to [pay more]," he said.
"When you start to look at it, you're only talking about $5 a kilogram and what do you buy for $5 a kilo?
"It costs an enormous amount more to grow upon arrival now than it did 10 years ago."
Queensland issue
Pineapple supplier Anthony Dobson packs about 12 million pineapples each year from farmers in north, central and south-east Queensland.
He said supply was down to about half of usual levels due to the immature flowering event in summer.
"The plants, they thought they were going to die, so what they did is they set flower but the problem being is you need a fairly large plant to sustain a normal, edible size, pineapple," he said.
"Not all of that fruit was of a size that we could actually do anything with.
"So we've gone from too much fruit in a very short period of time to what is now not enough fruit to supply the market and that is effectively what is driving up the price.
"I don't think in living memory, we've seen prices this high."
He said farmers in the Bundaberg region were hit the worst in Queensland with 80 per cent of their crop impacted, while in central and south-east Queensland about 40 per cent of crop was affected.
"A pineapple takes two years to grow so recovery.
"We're looking at somewhere between 15 and 18 months before we're back to normal supply level," he said.
