Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Odesa oblast farmers experience some great problems with sales of white-headed cabbage
Odesa oblast farmers inform about difficulties they face selling the produced white-headed cabbage of late variety. The wholesale supplies are offered on USD $ 0.09/kg; but the demand for cabbage on that price is very low. As a result the large wholesale supplies on this price are nearly impossible. The retail prices on cabbage on the rayon centers markets have already gone down to USD $ 0.11/kg, and in Odesa retail price is up to USD $ 0.13/kg.
As the reason for low prices the producers consider to be the cabbage overproduction in Ukraine. This year Odesa oblast farmers report about high cabbage yield of late variety, even on bogharic lands it was harvested more than 45 tons/hectare. Moreover, in over oblasts the cabbage yield on rainfed lands sometimes reaches 100 tons/hectare. Some farmers of Odesa oblast inform that they sold the produced cabbage for on purpose cut price of about USD $ 0.07/kg, fearing that past year situation would repeat, when farmers had to utilize the out of demand commodity.
The problem to sell cabbage on USD $ 0.09/kg in Odesa oblast is quite explainable. At the present moment there are wholesale cabbage supplies from the central regions of Ukraine on USD $ 0.02-0.03/kg on Odesa markets. Moreover, according to the farmers' evaluations, the self-cost of cabbage production ranges within USD $ 0.007-0.01/kg, so in case of USD $ 0.02 is a 100% cost-effectiveness. We can suppose that self-cost of Odesa oblast cabbage is 20-30% higher; that makes the price of USD $ 0.07/kg rather favorable too. Of course, the farmers still remember the spring 2003 when wholesale price on cabbage was USD $ 0.56/kg, so they consider the price of USD $ 0.09/kg as very low.
We should note that Odesa oblast is one of the regions with comparatively small cabbage production per one inhabitant. The deficit of production is covered due to commodity supplies from the over oblasts. The greatest cabbage overproduction is observed in Lviv, Zakarpattya, Rivne and Zhytomyr oblasts.
This year, according to the latest prognoses of Agricultural Marketing Project, the record average cabbage yield is expected, that will exceed past year yield on 7%. However, due to the shortening of the production land acreage on 18-20% the production will decrease on 14%. So the cabbage overproduction on the internal market may exceed 120,000 tons. As Ukrainian companies have had no experience of export cabbage supplies yet, we cannot expect for the significantly higher prices on cabbage this year.