February 8 2005, 08:25 Agrarian Marketing Project

Cucumber and tomato production in Ukraine 2005 may increase rapidly

The tentative prognosis of vegetable production in 2005 worked out by the specialists of Agricultural Marketing Project shows that farmers are going to increase the acreage of cucumber production lands to the most significant extent. The reason for it is that prices for cucumbers observed in 2004 were very high because of the unfavorable weather conditions - and the demand grew up dramatically. According to the preliminary evaluation, the cucumber production in 2004 went down on 19% despite of the fact that the acreage of cucumber production lands had not been practically changed.

In 2005, according to evaluations of Agricultural Marketing Project analysts, cucumber production may grow on 20-30% and cucumber production lands increase on 10%.

Still, according to the preliminary prognoses, the most significant vegetable production growth in 2005 will be observed for tomatoes, which suffered even more than cucumbers in the previous season because of the bad weather and many diseases. The past year production decrease on 20-25% may be fully compensated by production growth on 35-45% possible in 2005.

We should mention that the demand for cucumbers and tomatoes continues growing in 2005, mostly on the account of expanding the capacity of the processing enterprises.

The leading cucumber producers in Ukraine are Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Kyrovograd and Poltava oblasts, and the main tomato production is concentrated in Kherson and Odesa oblasts.