In Ukraine the prices of vegetables for borsch (onions, potato, carrots, beets and other vegetables) would fall by around 90% in a year, if in the period of growing the new harvest no weather irregularities are recorded, experts from the EastFruit news and analytical platform have said. According to a report on the website of EastFruit, the reason for the rapid growth of prices for vegetables this season was the small harvest due to weather conditions.
In addition, the rise in prices was due to the fact that many Ukrainian vegetable growers went out of business in 2018 or sharply reduced the areas with vegetables after several years of low prices for the entire range of borsch vegetables, EastFruit Project Manager Kateryna Zvereva said.
“The reason was simple: Ukraine’s vegetable production lost access to the two main markets for traditional vegetables with shortest supply: Crimea and Donbas. It was there that products were not grown enough, prices were high, and there were many consumers,” EastFruit said.
At the same time, according to EastFruit, this season, the area with vegetables, in particular with the onion, will increase significantly, and if there is no abnormal heat and drought in the summer, then next year we can expect overproduction and lower prices.
According to EastFruit, Ukraine usually covers a shortage of vegetables by exports from Poland and other EU countries, but this year there is also a shortage of vegetables in the EU.
As a result, Ukrainian vegetable importers first began to buy vegetables (primarily onions) in Central Asian countries, but logistics from these countries is expensive, which affected the price for consumers this season, EastFruit said.
