The levy-funded Harvest to Home online dashboard has once again been updated with the freshest retail data, giving you valuable insights into the performance of individual vegetable lines.

If you haven’t already taken a look, the team at Nielsen Australia has also recently published two case studies taking a closer look at the performance of some significant lines:

• Sweetpotato: Sweetpotato is well-regarded by consumers, emerging in a recent survey as the highest of 28 vegetables when rated on value (8.4/10) and quality (8.6/10). However, for the 52 weeks ending 6 October 2018, sweetpotato kilograms sold were 5 per cent lower than the previous year.

  High- and above-average-affluence households currently represent 50.8 per cent of sweetpotato dollar sales – if this were to increase to 53 per cent (in line with this demographic’s share of total vegetable dollar sales), it could add $4.5 million to the category’s total value. Read more here, including commentary from Linda Zunker of Windhum Farms.

• Cabbage: In the 52 weeks ending 3 November 2018 cabbage saw significant sales growth, with an increase of 5.5 per cent in dollar sales and 12.7 per cent in volume sales compared to the previous 12 months.

  However, non-families grew dollar sales by 6.9 per cent while dollar sales to families increased at a much slower rate of 2.1 per cent, leading to the question: how can we educate these consumers of tomorrow to make sure cabbage stays relevant in the future? Read more here.

If you want to learn more about how the Harvest to Home dashboard could be used to support your business decisions, take a look at our profile of how Mulgowie Farming Company incorporate this data into their operations, or take a look at this Harvest to Home case study on the performance of beans and sweetcorn.

This post appeared in the AUSVEG Weekly Update published 5 February 2019. Subscribe to the Update using our online form to receive the latest industry news in your inbox every week!

MT17017 Vegetable Cluster Consumer Insights Program has been funded by Hort Innovation using the onion, sweetpotato and vegetable research and development levies and contributions from the Australian Government. Hort Innovation is the grower-owned, not-for-profit research and development corporation for Australian horticulture.