September 29 2006, 09:37

Tomato harvesting is close to an end in Ukraine: it is top record

The season of field tomato harvesting is close to an end in Ukraine. This year is notable for a top record harvest. According to evaluations of the Agricultural Marketing Project (AMP), this year harvest of tomatoes makes more than 1.5 mln. tons (less than 1.4 mln. tons of tomatoes were harvested past year). Favorable weather conditions during the vegetation period are the main beneficial factors as they constrain the spread of diseases; and greater harvest was also caused by extended cultivation areas.

The market development this year is backed up with the trend of tomato production transmittion to more appropriate climatic zones, to the South of Ukraine. Especially, it concerns tomatoes for commercial processing. The producers from the southern regions not only provide local processing enterprises with raw materials, but they are also actively signing contracts with the canneries in other regions. Thus, the market is reduced for local producers. Many Zakarpattya canneries purchased tomatoes from the southern regions this year; this fact became the main reason for the reduction of tomato cultivation areas in Zakarpattya.

One of the most urgent problems which tomato producers face this season is the continuous growth of labor expenses. In this regard, the process of gradual mechanization of tomato production seems to be a logical solution; especially it concerns seed and transplant planting and tomato harvesting activities.

The demand for tomatoes as raw materials was quite high this year. According to our information, most producers of tomato paste have met the obligations on tomato purchase. The price did not decrease lower than $0.04-0.05/kg. Not being rather high, the price still satisfied the farmers. As before, the demand for high quality tomatoes was growing simultaneously with the reduction of low- and medium-quality tomato market.

One of top news this season was cherry tomato oversupply. Processors have been actively promoting cherry tomato production among the farmers during the recent years. The processing enterprises need to have pickled cherry tomatoes in the assortment line, though the demand for this commodity is rather limited. The transportability of this tomato variety is very low; that's why many canneries cultivate own fields nearby the place of processing. Tomato yield was good this year; moreover, cucumbers competed with tomatoes to load the processing line. As a result, farmers found it problematic to sell cherry tomato. It is worth mentioning that production cost of cherry tomatoes is very high due to the manual labor needed to harvest this commodity. And, cherry tomato transportation for a long distance is also very problematic. In some cases the farmers had to leave cherry tomatoes on field.

The detailed forecast of tomato production and prices please find in October issues of "Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" journal.