The harvest this year was far from planned, so Ukraine had to increase the supply of some vegetables. The volume of imports of potatoes has increased significantly, but other vegetables dismantle quite the opposite dynamics, writes SEEDS.
This was told by Bogdan Dukhnitsky, senior researcher of the Department of Agricultural Production Economics and International Integration of the National Research Center Institute of Agrarian Economics during the conference VeggiFruits. Processing of vegetables and fruits.
“According to the results of 10 months of 2024, there was a decrease in the value volumes of vegetable supplies to Ukraine, which affected their quantitative volumes. At the same time, imports of fruits and berries by their total value remained at the level of 2023.
As for the dynamics of import purchases for the first 10 months of 2024, in the vegetable group it is noteworthy that, although relatively insignificant, but from the base of last year there was an increase of 90% of potato purchases. This is due to the fact that the current year’s crop was far from the projected one.
While the rest of the vegetable items, which we had as a typical staple – onions, garlic, carrots, cabbage and cucumbers), are now showing a significant decline in imports. This is due to the fact that partly due to re-location and deformatization of specialization many enterprises managed to compensate for the significant decline, which we had in 2022,” – said the expert.
According to the expert, according to the results of January-October of this year, the geographical structure of vegetable supplies to Ukraine has a clear leader – it is Turkey. Also large in value volumes of supplies come to Poland and the Netherlands.
“In Ukraine, the standard production volume of all vegetables is about 10 million tons. In 2022, for obvious reasons, production fell significantly, it was 7.5 million tons. That is, 25% of the typical supply was not on the market. In 2023, Ukraine already produced more than 8 million tons of vegetables, and partially this demand was compensated.
Since 2022, as a result of a serious increase in import demand, vegetables were added to the key items in foreign purchases. This was also one of the reasons why in 2022 vegetables in Ukraine showed the largest price increase – plus 68%. This was the most expensive category. However, in contrast to them, fruits were on the list of the most expensive products, and remained there in 2023″, – says Bohdan Dukhnitsky.
In his opinion, in the next year, 2025, due to the existing circumstances, there is a high probability that the market in general will remain uncertain and high risks.
“Due to the fact that according to the results of this year’s harvest there was a significant decrease in quantitative and qualitative parameters for such positions as cabbage, apples, grapes, potatoes and some others, the need to import them remains and this also entails high prices. However, not specifically all these items in significant volumes. For example, for potatoes prices are now on average twice as high as they were a year ago.
However, despite all these circumstances, the supply in the domestic market of Ukraine, in its absolute majority still in the fruit and vegetable segment, in general and for specific products, primarily growing due to the natural and climatic features of our country, will be formed in the absolute majority of its own production, “ – said the expert.
Source: https://www.seeds.org.ua/ukraine-prishlos-uvelichit-import-kartofelya-na-90/
