May 24 2011, 10:19 Fruit-Inform

Poland will again not have cheap sour cherries

In the new season sour cherry prices in Poland will be not lower than last year. Moreover, there is a high probability of even higher prices. Such forecasts were made by Piotr Grel, editor-in-chief of Sad Nowoczesny, during the Second International Conference-Exhibition “Berries of Ukraine-2011: Freezing and Fresh Market”. In his opinion, such a situation is connected with the current season's sour cherry harvest in Poland to have again suffered from unfavorable weather conditions. Hard frost in the first half of the winter and sudden frosts in early May had negative influence on sour cherry yields. In view of Polish farmers to have paid little attention to protection of orchards in previous seasons, decrease of production, according to different forecasts, may amount to 10-30%. “Till 2010 sour cherry prices were steadily decreasing in Poland which resulted in Polish farmers' interest to production of this crop to have sharply fallen”, the expert said during his speech. “However, already for 2 years sour cherry prices are staying at quite high level in Poland which is connected with harvest loss due to weather factor and high demand from Russia and Europe.”