Economics, eh? Doesn’t it work in mysterious ways. One minute no one under the age of 40 can buy a house because they’re too busy gorging themselves on $22 café smashed avo, and then next minute avocado prices (and, oddly, house prices – suggesting the two may be as connected as we’ve always suspected) have plummeted and they can’t give the things away. 

I’m referring of course to the Great Avocado Oversupply of 2022, also known as the Avo-lanche, that’s hitting our supermarket shelves as I write. While inflation and natural disasters like floods have caused huge price hikes for almost all other produce, avocado farmers have somehow managed to grow a bumper crop of the nation’s favourite creamy green fruit, meaning that prices have fallen through the floor.

In fact, a new report by agribusiness bank Rabobank has warned that Australian farmers have managed to grow 22 avocados per Australian in 2022, a 26 per cent increase on last year. Prices have fallen in line with the glut, with avocados selling for as little as $1 each in July. And that means avocado farmers are begging us to eat more of the things, in order to help them out with their surplus.

It’s an astonishing situation. It’s almost as though we’ve loved the avocado so hard that we’ve loved it to death. We’ve demanded its presence with such vigour – mashed onto toast with feta and dukkah and the ubiquitous Instagram-pretty sprinkle of edible pansies or pomegranate seeds, blended into chocolate mousse, shaped into cacao bliss balls – that we’ve tricked farmers into growing more than we needed and unwittingly brought about its downfall.

Related story: Grab the sourdough, we’re in for an ‘avolanche’ of affordable avocados

If things carry on in this vein we may well find ourselves ordering avocado side salads in restaurants, with the option of adding a $12 side of lettuce. Avocados could become the new baked potato, halved and filled with toppings for a budget Sunday night supper. Guacamole could become the new margarine.

Perhaps the day is upon us when impoverished uni students won’t be living in squalid share houses eating nothing but baked beans on toast, but in suddenly-affordable mortgaged houses eating smashed avo on sourdough. 

We’re truly living in The Upside Down.

So what can you do to help make a dent in the great Avo-lanche? You can, as the famous avocado ad of 2012 urged, “’Ave an Avo”. In fact, you can ‘ave one for you and ‘ave one of the country. 

And here are a few tips about how to make the most of them:

1. Don’t get upset about buying them when they’re hard. In fact, all avocados are picked when they’re unripe, and only begin to ripen off the tree, so an avocado that feels like a cricket ball is a sign that it’s super fresh. To ripen it up quickly, pop it in a paper bag with a banana. Or if you buy a few at a time (and at these prices who wouldn’t), keep them in a dark place and bring them out one at a time to ripen in batches.
2. Don’t shun the Shepard. I know, everyone’s suss about the Shepard, Australia’s avocado-in-waiting, that only makes up around 10-15 percent of our avocado diet. The hearty Hass has our heart. But Shepards have a cool secret trick: yes, they’re harder, yes, they’re not as easy to mash but they don’t go brown nearly as quickly as their Hass counterparts. That makes them a much better option if you need them to sit out on a table for an extended period in a salad or dip.
3. Try cooking them. Just kidding. That’s disgusting. Chilled or nothing. We might be in an avocado free-for-all but we don’t have to behave like animals. 

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