Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Odesa farmers give up producing cucumbers
The growth of labor cost in southern regions of Ukraine influences negatively the production of some vegetable crops which require much of hand work. One of such crops is cucumber; however, southern climate is not optimal for cucumber production, too. These factors lead to the permanent decrease of cucumber production in Odesa oblast, to the opinion of Alexander Lasinskiy, Coordinator of the regional office of Agricultural Marketing Project. In particular, in 2005 some farmers who produced cucumbers earlier, decided to stop this activity.
At the same time rapid development of fruit and vegetable processing enterprises is leading to the demand increase on cucumbers in this region. On purpose to get the producers interested in growing this crop, this year some enterprises even propose the partial reimburse of expenses for cucumber production and the guaranteed sale according to the contract on cucumber production.
As Agricultural Marketing Project already informed, cucumber production has been moving smoothly from south of Ukraine to north for a couple of years already; the major production is concentrated in the central regions where a large number of canneries have been opened lately. The production and processing of cucumber is rather rapidly developing in Zakarpattya oblast too. The analysts of Agricultural Marketing Project prognose the increase of cucumber production on 25-35% in 2005.