In the cooler months, people tend to gravitate towards comfort food, like a stew or fruit crumble. Something that keeps them full and warm.

Key points: Rhubarb is a perennial vegetable

Rhubarb is a perennial vegetable Tasmania produces the bulk of Australia's rhubarb

Tasmania produces the bulk of Australia's rhubarb Climate change is driving demand for cool-climate production

Rhubarb is a perfect comfort food.

A perennial vegetable often treated like a fruit, demand for the ruby stems spikes in autumn and winter, but the harvest runs for nearly nine months of the year.

So the challenge for commercial growers is finding markets for all grades of rhubarb across the production window.

Australia's biggest rhubarb supplier in Tasmania's north-east, Jerrod Nichols, feeds the stalks to cattle when his produce is not in demand.

"The cattle quite like them and they seem to do very well on them," Mr Nichols said.

"At the moment, the leaves we're using as compost around our lemon trees.

"It's a fairly good utilisation of a product that otherwise would be tipped back in the paddock."

Mr Nichols started growing the crop commercially on the fertile Scottsdale hills in 2007.

It was a few years after vegetable processor Simplot closed its factory in the town.

He decided to take a punt on rhubarb, a crop he knew nothing about.

Fourteen years later, the potato and poppy farmer is delivering 14,000 bunches of rhubarb a week to major supermarkets and wholesalers across the country.

Rhubarb grower Jerrod Nichols inspects his crop at Scottsdale in Tasmania's north-east. ( ABC Rural: Fiona Breen )

Money for jam

The rhubarb that fails to make the cut for retail, ends up at his cousin's jam factory Rhu Bru.

Holger Ostersen and his wife Jan opened their commercial kitchen in 2008.

The enterprising couple began experimenting with rhubarb and now produce dozens of products, including jams and chutney, for the large retailers.

"All the products we use are seconds," Mr Ostersen said.

"All the raspberries [are] from berry growers in Tasmania, blueberries, strawberries, blackcurrants.

Jam maker Holger Ostersen makes rhubarb and raspberry jam at his factory in Scottsdale. ( ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith )

"When we process it, they all become first grade."

He takes about eight tonnes of second-grade rhubarb a year from Mr Nichols's farm.

Mr Ostersen also value adds to onions, carrots and beetroot from the district.

"Being in this business you always have to create new products because nothing lasts forever," Mr Ostersen said.

"You get a product into the supermarket, but then it will come out again one day.

"So you have to have something new, to go in."

Rhu Bru's rhubarb compote is coming off the shelves this year, but Mr Ostersen hopes a new line of pickled vegetables will fill that space.

Rhubarb thriving in a cool climate

More frequent and extreme heat on mainland Australia has lifted demand for Tasmanian-grown rhubarb.

Mr Nichols grows about 20 hectares of rhubarb and will plant another 5 hectares next year.

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"The last couple of years in particular, the demand through the late summer and autumn period has probably exceeded what we've done in the past by a considerable amount.

"Because of the extreme heat, the conditions they've had, there's been very little summer and autumn production on the mainland.

"It's enabled us to fill that gap."

Rhubarb bunches ready to be shipped to the major supermarkets around Australia ( ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith )

Mr Nichols expects more companies to source higher volumes of fruit and vegetables out of the apple isle because of climate change.

He said that would probably lead to more pressure on available land to grow food in the state.

"We're going to transplant a lot more rhubarb than we generally do," Mr Nichols said.

"The beauty of rhubarb too is that if you've got too much in the ground, it's not a great expense.

"You can run a slasher over it and let it go again.

"But I can envisage the demand is going to see that steady increase over the next few years."