Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Acreage of vegetable production lands will continue to increase in 2005
To the opinion of Agricultural Marketing Project, the trend of acreage increase for vegetable production lands will be preserved in 2005 too. They made this conclusion basing on the survey among the vegetable producers of all three climatic zones of Ukraine concerning their plans. The results of the survey are only preliminary, cause the intentions of vegetable producers may change in the beginning of planting time. However, if we take into account that prices on the major kinds of vegetables with the great probability will increase by that time, we can prognose that the extension of planting acreage may be even more significant.
At the present moment the analysts of the Project presuppose that the total planting acreage under the nine major vegetable crops (cabbage, tomato, cucumber, red beets, onion, carrot, squash, pepper and egg-plant) may increase on 2% comparing to the previous year. The significant changes of these expectations are possible practically for each of these crops.
It is expected that the fastest acreage increase rates (on 5%) may be observed for vegetable production in the forest-steppe agriclimatic zone, that is partially caused by price growth for fuel and, as a result, the concentration of the production close to the main consumption zones. In this zone of Ukraine a great number of processing enterprises is situated; here 35% of the country population lives; many areas of this zone are located directly near the large consumption centers of the other agriclimatic zones; they have the favorable ground and climatic conditions for the broad vegetable assortment production.
The vegetable production lands will continue to extend in the steppe zone too. In the present moment the acreage increase on 2% is expected; still this prognosis may be reconsidered in the direction of scaling up. We'd remind that 44% of the population of Ukraine lives in steppe zone and it has the most favorable climatic conditions for the great assortment of vegetable assortment production. Here also the largest enterprises specialized on fruit and vegetable processing are situated.
In connection of the overproduction of the root crops observed this year in Ukraine - the Polissya producers are specialized on the production of this commodity - the acreage of planted lands under this crop won't change much, according to our evaluation. The total acreage under roof beets will probably decrease.
We should also mention that the further contraction of acreage of potato producing lands is expected throughout of Ukraine, according to the preliminary evaluation, on 3%. It is expected that the acreage of potato production lands will increase on 1-3% in steppe zone.