July 31 2007, 09:48

Successfully started season may disappoint watermelon and melon producers in Southern Ukraine

Ukrainian growers of melons and watermelons managed to avoid making past-year mistakes - overproduction and the following price collapse, and even build up produce export to EU. Despite of this fact, this season may turn out to be less successful than earlier expected. If there are no rainfalls in the coming weeks in Kherson region, late watermelon (the basis of the national watermelon export) will just be burnt on fields.

At the first glance this season promises to become much more successful than the season 2006 for melon and watermelon producers. Andriy Yarmak, the Analyst of "Agrooglyad: Vegetables and Fruits" project, says that this year the agricultural producers have extended on 5% watermelon and melon cultivation areas, up to 70,000 ha. The weather favored too. Dry and hot weather let the producers bring first watermelons to trade two weeks earlier than usually. Watermelon flavor was perfect. The experts say, watermelons and melons are sweet, but not watery this season, so that the product is competitive not only on the inner market, but on the export market too.

The industry got benefits even from the planned reduction of watermelon harvest down to 15% (500,000 tons) comparing to the previous summer, which was rich for watermelons. Past year the prices declined to the record low level on the over-saturated market. Watermelons were sold for $0.03/kg, so that many producers gave up harvesting products. This year the purchase price for watermelon is $0.1-0.12/kg on the main "watermelon" market of the country in Velyky Kopani, Kherson region.

The producers of melons and watermelons are also happy with a high demand for their products on the inner and external markets. A. Yarmak forecasts the growth of Ukrainian watermelon export to Poland, Baltic and Scandinavian countries. The exporting volumes will approximately constitute around 15,000 tons according to the season results. Yuri Kin, the owner of "Arbuz" farm (Skadovsk, Kherson region) says he has already contracted the whole harvest; he even has to reject quite profitable proposals of the buyers from Poland and Italy. "Many farmers lack the needed volumes of watermelons this year; we have not counted on such an inflow of buyers", he explained.

Nevertheless, the optimistic beginning turned out to be blurry in the end of July. "Watermelons are literary burning on fields because of drought. If there are no rainfalls soon, no late watermelon will enter the markets. But, exactly late varieties serve as the basis of our exporting supplies to the EU countries", Valeriy Fedorenko informs, Commercial Director of "Navigator-Agro" company. He says, Ukraine yields to Hungary as the producer of early watermelons. Hungarian farmers get governmental donations worth to 30% of the product cost; as a result, they are able to provide more favorable prices to European buyers than Ukrainian suppliers. "We sell watermelons for $0.15/kg, Hungarians do it for $0.09/kg. Our exporters are not able to decrease the price because of the requirement to pay tariff rate equal to 6% of the product cost. Also, watermelon production cost is rather high - for example, we still use manual labor to cover plantations with film; Hungarians have been using special machinery for a long time. National technologies of watermelon production are weak too", V. Fedorenko explains.

Earlier the main problem of our watermelon producers on the export markets was the variety - to the experts' opinion, the unusual for EU varieties hampered the supplies. A. Yarmak tells that the situation has changed - farmers are actively switching to average European varieties. Yuri Kin says about the active experiments with the novelties in his farm; he allocates the commercial areas for the varieties performing better than others.

At the same time, V. Fedorenko draws attention to the fact that actively used Dutch varieties and hybrids are not characterized with perfect flavor; they are also poorly stored and transported. Also, they have been poorly performing in our conditions because of the changing climate in Ukraine. Traditional national varieties are gradually dying out; it has already happened to the famous "knyazhich" variety. Nobody is occupied with the selection of new varieties, as the government doesn't pay money for that. In this situation Ukrainian watermelon producers find it more complicated to compete to Russians - our neighbors do not economize on the selection, they have recently introduced several new watermelon varieties on market.