June 5 2006, 10:17

This weekend early cabbage price declined twice in Kherson oblast

The price for early cabbage declined down to $ 0.07-0.08/kg on wholesale produce market KOPANI in Kherson oblast. We'll remind that early cabbage price was $0.15-0.19/kg on Friday. The price decrease was caused by the excessive cabbage supply, Roman Rybalko says, the Wholesale Price Monitoring Specialist of the Agricultural Marketing Project.

Early cabbage price decreased nearly two times on FARMER wholesale market in Kyiv as well. Today early cabbage costs $0.19-0.27/kg; on Friday the wholesale price was $0.33-0.39/kg.

According to the forecast of the Agricultural Marketing Project, in 2006 the production of early cabbage has increased 15-20% and pressed the prices. In addition to the production growth, farmers had to stand nature's whims, cause long frosts did not let them timely plant seedlings. As a result, the sales period was postponed 1-2 weeks, and sometimes even longer.

Lower prices and shorter sales period did not let many producers have the expected profit from early cabbage sales. Some farmers - early cabbage producers report they do not plan to extend cabbage acreage next year, for the first time in many years. Some of them even plan to substitute cabbage for other crops, squash in particular.