Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Next year strawberry production may decrease dramatically in Poland
Poland farmers have been among the leading suppliers of frozen and cooled strawberry to Western Europe countries for a long time; now they are replowing strawberry beds after two subsequent years of crop loss. We'll remind that past year many farmers did not even harvest grown strawberry as the prices on this product were significantly lower its production cost. Fresh strawberry prices in peak season dropped down to USD 0.28-0.32/kg; at the same time strawberry production cost is USD 0.4-0.5/kg in Poland. The main reason for price drop was the rapidly increased supply of cheap frozen strawberry of China and Morocco origin to the EU countries.
At the present moment the EU investigates the reasons for cheap prices on Chinese products; many Polish strawberry producers hope that the EU will take measures to protect its market as a result. Still many farmers have given up the idea to develop strawberry business, that's why in Poland strawberry production may decrease significantly as soon as in 2006.
Despite the donations available for farms, not less than 1 ha and able to produce strawberry worth USD 67.11/ha, strawberry production remained unprofitable this year in Poland. One of the problems was out-of-date production technologies, so that farmers could not decrease production cost and improve quality. According to USDA Foreign Agricultural Service evaluations, about 97% of Polish strawberry producers apply out-of-date technologies. Senga Sengana, Kama, Dukat, Elsanta, Selva, Kent, Korona and Marmolada are the most popular strawberry varieties, according to the information provided by the same source.
Note, that Ukrainian producers also apply new technologies of fruit and vegetable production, strawberry in particular. Despite of the required large starting investments, new technologies often let farmers decrease production cost and improve quality, i.e. have better price.
The best produce business experts will speak about new production technologies of strawberry, other fruits and vegetables in Ukraine during the second international conference-exhibition "Fruits and Vegetables of Ukraine 2005" to be held in Kyiv on December 5th-7th, 2005.