We’re well into hot cross bun season.
Toasted and slathered in butter or cold, straight from the packet, nothing says spring quite like a strange fruity bap.
But if you were planning on leaving it a little longer before you start having them for breakfast, you might want to reconsider – because the price of hot cross buns is set to soar due to a raisin shortage.
Over in California, farmers are struggling to produce the quantities of dried fruit necessary, with US raising prices having risen by 50% since September.
They’re producing increasingly fewer sultanas, current and raisins – preferring instead to focus on other crops which may yield greater returns.
It’s all down to a pesky heatwave.
It’s thought that 275,000 tonnes of raisins will be produced in 2017-18 in the sunshine state, which is an 8% reduction on last year and is 15% below the five-year average.
And that’s meant British bakeries having to look elsewhere for their dried fruits, including Turkey and Greece.
That, in turn, has sent the price of Turkish sultanas soaring by 30%. While some bakeries are also looking to Oz for help, Australian production seems to be weeks behind previous seasons due again to unfavourable weather conditions.
Basically, raisins are a no-go this year.
So, eat as many buns while you can still afford to.
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