Asparagus makes a great addition to almost any meal.
Since it has high levels of folate, fiber, and Vitamin C, eating asparagus can also keep you healthy.
After stopping by your local grocery store, however, you might find that the price of asparagus is high.
It may make you wonder what it is about asparagus that makes it such an expensive vegetable.
Why Is Asparagus So Expensive? (10 Reasons)
Asparagus can be as cheap as $2 a pound, but it can also be as high as $5 or even $7 a pound.
High production costs, difficult growth requirements, and inflation are all to blame for high asparagus prices.
Let’s look at these reasons and more in more detail.
1. Worker Shortage
One of the reasons asparagus is expensive is that the industry is facing a worker shortage.
It’s a lot of work to pick asparagus.
Unlike other vegetables, farmers can’t use a machine to pick asparagus.
It’s too delicate.
Instead, they have no choice but to employ actual workers.
The workers then have to carefully cut each stem individually.
That’s because the asparagus that you eat is actually the stem of the plant.
Since it’s extremely hard labor, there’s a high turnover rate.
Farmers are struggling to find people to work in their fields.
This means that there’s a chance that the entire field might not get picked.
There simply may not be enough workers to get to every part of the field before the harvest is over and the asparagus starts to rot.
Since it results in lower yields, farmers are unable to provide as high of a supply as they have in the past.
Because there’s a low supply and high demand for asparagus, the price of the vegetable increases.
Worker shortages are causing an increase in asparagus prices.
2. Require Lots Of Water
Another reason asparagus is expensive is that it requires lots of water.
Asparagus tends to require more water than other vegetables or fruits.
When planting asparagus in a home garden, you usually have to give a young asparagus plant one to two inches of water a week.
Farmers who are growing on a massive scale need to provide even more water.
This becomes a problem when the farm is experiencing drought or hot temperatures.
Drought is usually caused by hot temperatures but can come from other factors as well, and it can greatly reduce how much asparagus a farm yields.
Since the plants are unable to pull water from the ground, they need direct watering.
This means that farmers may need to buy water from elsewhere and transport it to a reservoir.
Then they’ll need to use irrigation pipes to spread the water throughout the field.
This can be costly, especially when the price of fuel and water is high.
During a drought, the demand for water is even higher.
Besides farms, people in the cities need access to water, too.
Besides needing it to stay hydrated, people use water to cook and clean.
High demand for water means high costs, and that means high prices for asparagus.
Hot temperatures can also influence how much a farmer needs to pay for water as the water in an area will evaporate faster.
The farmer will need to water their asparagus fields more often.
If they’re also experiencing a drought, then they’ll need to get even more water to counteract the evaporation caused by hot temperatures.
If the temperatures become too hot, it may even affect the ability of the asparagus.
That might result in a smaller yield which also affects the supply and price of asparagus.
Asparagus is expensive because it requires a lot of water to grow.
3. Prone To Disease
Since asparagus needs so much water to grow, it’s prone to disease.
Bacteria and fungi thrive in moist conditions.
Since asparagus requires a decent amount of water, it means the area around it tends to be quite moist.
That means it’s easier for bacteria and fungi to get access to asparagus.
There are several diseases that can kill or reduce an asparagus stalk’s vitality.
Some of them include:
- Fusarium crown and root rot
- Rust
- Purple spot
Most of these diseases come from fungi.
The fungi infect the asparagus, and if the disease isn’t caught in time, can kill the vegetable.
To avoid losing an entire field of asparagus, farmers have to spend a decent amount of money to protect them.
That usually means they buy herbicides and pesticides.
Inflation and other factors can cause the prices of such products to rise.
If those become expensive, then the farmer spends even more money to protect their fields.
Losing asparagus to disease also increases the price of asparagus.
When a farmer loses a portion of their field to disease, that means they have a smaller supply.
Since there’s less of a supply in the market and still high demand, the price increases.
Besides herbicides and pesticides, farmers also need to regularly test the water.
If the water has some sort of virus or fungus in it, then they’d be introducing that to their fields.
Finally, they need to regularly test their soil to ensure it isn’t contaminated with a disease.
All these precautions cost money.
The cost of protecting asparagus from disease and a low supply of asparagus caused by disease both make the prices of asparagus higher.
4. High Fertilizer Costs
Asparagus is also expensive because of the high cost of fertilizer.
The agricultural industry is currently facing a fertilizer shortage.
In particular, it’s ammonia-based and nitrogen-based fertilizer that is having problems.
There are quite a few reasons behind the shortage.
One of the biggest is a reduction in refineries.
Ammonia comes from natural gas refineries.
With certain events occurring in Europe, there’s been a reduction in natural gas.
With less natural gas, it means there’s even less ammonia.
Natural gas refineries primarily produce natural gas.
They also produce ammonia but in smaller quantities.
Because there’s a natural gas shortage, there’s an even greater shortage of ammonia.
Without ammonia, fertilizer companies are unable to produce ammonia-based fertilizers.
Since a lot of farmers use ammonia-based fertilizers, they’re having to pay high prices for them.
Because that impacts their production costs, they have to cover those costs with high prices on their asparagus.
Europe isn’t the only country facing problems with its ammonia supply either.
China is also having problems with its coal refineries.
Worker shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic have stunted the refinery’s ability to produce coal and ammonia.
China primarily gets its ammonia from coal mining.
With a reduction in operating refineries for coal, it means they have less ammonia to sell, too.
This leads to a massive shortage of ammonia.
With farmers all needing fertilizer to keep their plants healthy and growing well, it becomes a situation where only the highest bidders can get the fertilizer that they need.
Farmers with smaller budgets have to make do with what they get.
Meanwhile, those who have the money find themselves having to spend a lot to get their fertilizer.
To make up for those costs, farmers are increasing the prices of their vegetables.
That includes asparagus since farmers also need to use fertilizer to encourage asparagus to grow well.
Asparagus is expensive because of the high cost of fertilizer.
5. Lots Of Land Area
Asparagus is also expensive because it requires a lot of land area in which to grow.
Asparagus is a large plant, but it isn’t a plant that grows expansively.
Since it’s the stalks that humans eat, they only grow vertically.
Because of that, if a farmer wants to produce a large enough yield to actually make money, they’re going to need a lot of land.
Another factor is the fact that asparagus doesn’t bloom with several different vegetables.
You only get one stalk per seed.
Other fruits and vegetables like strawberries, pumpkins, and blueberries can produce several fruits or vegetables from a single seed.
Farmers are able to get more out of a single seed.
As such, they don’t need quite as much land since they can plant a few seeds and get a good harvest out of those seeds.
With asparagus, if a farmer wants to make a decent amount of money, then they’re going to need a lot of room in which to plant a lot of asparagus seeds.
This makes asparagus more expensive because it means farmers have to maintain more land.
For farmers just starting out with asparagus, it may even require them to buy or rent more land.
For farmers who do rent land, their rental costs might be even higher.
In addition, because asparagus requires more land in which to grow, the price of maintaining that land is higher.
Farmers will have more to fertilize, more to water, and more to tend to while the asparagus grows.
All these factors make growing asparagus more expensive.
Since it’s expensive to grow, farmers have to sell asparagus at expensive prices.
6. High Labor Costs
Because of the worker shortages that asparagus farmers are experiencing, they’ve had to increase the wages given to asparagus workers.
Some farmers might pay their workers $14 or more an hour.
Part of the reason they have to pay higher than minimum wage in some areas is just the nature of the work.
It’s backbreaking work.
Workers have to sit low on carts or on their hands and knees and cut each asparagus stalk by hand.
They also can’t just go in a line.
Each asparagus stalk needs careful examination to determine if it is ready for cutting.
Most farmers want to get their asparagus stalks as high as possible before they’re cut.
The larger they are, the heavier they are, and the more they sell for.
However, waiting too long risks killing the asparagus.
They might freeze during the night or get infected with a disease.
As such, some workers might not even work a standard 40-hour week.
Other times, they may need to work extra hours to ensure they get all the stalks that have sprouted for that day.
The inconsistency of the work and its hard impact on the body means workers expect higher wages.
This makes asparagus more expensive because farmers need to cover those costs.
Asparagus is expensive because of its high labor costs.
7. Growth Takes A Long Time
Asparagus is also expensive because it takes a long time for young plants to grow.
Asparagus farmers have to wait two to three years before they can start harvesting their asparagus.
It takes considerable time for asparagus roots to form.
The good news about asparagus is that you can usually get two or even three harvests out of them in a single year.
That’s because even after workers have cut the stalk, the asparagus continues to grow.
As long as the timing of everything else goes right, a farmer might be able to cut the same asparagus stalk two or three times before the harvest ends.
That said, they have to wait a few years before they can start making money off their fields.
That means they have a huge overhead cost with nothing to show for it.
Farmers have to rely on loans or other crops to stay afloat while they wait for their asparagus to grow.
Some farmers may not be able to wait that long.
Their finances might crumble.
Farmers who take on loans have to pay them back as quickly as they can.
To do that, once they’re finally able to start producing asparagus, they sell it at high prices.
It helps cover the time in which they weren’t making money on that crop.
8. Imported Prices
A lot of asparagus in the United States comes from other countries.
While there are a few domestic farmers who grow and sell asparagus, the biggest supply comes from countries like Mexico and Peru.
Part of the reason is the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Andean Trade Preference Act.
These Acts got rid of tariffs on asparagus.
It allowed foreign countries to sell asparagus to the United States at cheaper prices than farmers in the United States could afford.
This led to a reduction in asparagus farmers in the United States because there wasn’t money in it.
Californian droughts have also impacted domestic farmers.
With the cost of water too high, they had to abandon their farms.
This means that many people end up buying asparagus that comes from a different country.
They’re faced with higher prices due to import fees and transportation costs.
Asparagus is expensive because a large amount of it comes from other countries.
9. Seasonal Price Fluctuations
The time of year in which you buy asparagus also influences its price.
Asparagus requires warm temperatures to grow.
As such, it tends to be a plant that grows well in the spring and summer.
Those who live in areas where it gets excessively cold in the winter won’t be able to grow asparagus year-round.
As such, they have to import asparagus from other states or other countries.
This makes asparagus more expensive because you’re paying import fees and transportation costs.
Asparagus is cheaper when it’s in season because there’s a chance your grocery store gets its asparagus from a domestic farmer.
That means no import fees and fewer transportation costs.
Asparagus is expensive when it’s out of season.
10. Cold Weather
A final reason asparagus is expensive is when an area experiences a blast of premature cold weather.
One of the biggest threats to asparagus is frost damage.
Because asparagus grows right up until autumn, there’s a chance that some of the yields will get reduced by freezing temperatures.
As temperatures drop at night, the asparagus might freeze and die off.
Since farmers aren’t able to get as high of a yield, the supply of asparagus in the overall market is lower.
With the demand for asparagus high, the low supply drives up the price even further.
Asparagus is expensive when cold weather ruins certain fields.
Conclusion
Asparagus is a tasty and healthy vegetable that makes a great side dish for almost any meal.
However, it isn’t easy to grow and it’s even more difficult to harvest.
As such, the reasons above are some of the factors that influence the high price of asparagus.
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