Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Prices for cabbage and root crops jumped up dramatically because of the deterioration of the weather conditions
The information from the target regions of Agricultural Marketing Project (AMP) shows that the cabbage prices continue increasing dramatically. The growth of retail prices exceeded 20% during this week, and the wholesale supplies of cabbage of low price have been practically stopped.
On Wednesday, on the 9th of March the cabbage price growth went on; many market players associated this situation with the decrease of trade activity among farmers in the period of March holidays and snowfalls which prevented the cabbage supply from the rural areas. According to the information of trade sources, today the wholesale prices reached USD $ 0.37/kg on Kyiv wholesale markets and grew up to USD $ 0.3-0.33/kg in other "deficit" oblasts. Past Friday the wholesale prices on cabbage exceeded USD $ 0.26-0.28/kg.
Just compare - in the beginning of March 2004 the wholesale prices on cabbage were 3-4 times lower and amounted to USD $ 0.05 - 0.09/kg. Moreover, in April-May the wholesale prices on white-headed cabbage decreased to USD $ 0.02- 0.04/kg.
It is interesting to mention that delays in cabbage supplies led to the price growth on the other root crops - during the week retail prices on carrot increased on 25%, on onion - on 9% and on potato - on 3%.
If we take into consideration that the weather conditions in the major regions of Ukraine remain unfavorable in the nearest future, we may expect that the price growth trend on cabbage and root crops will be preserved. However, in line with the weather improvement and growth of supply of these commodities on market the prices may be stabilized and even go down for some items.
We'd like to remind that the largest cabbage volumes are supplied to the regions of Ukraine by the farmers of Lviv, Zakarpattya, Rivne and Zhytomyr oblasts, and the strongest deficit of this commodity is traditionally observed in the city of Kyiv, Donetsk oblast and AR Crimea.