Officials from Ukrainian wholesale agricultural market Shuvar have reported that the harvest of early wood strawberries in 2020 may turn out to be Ukraine's lowest over the past five years.
"The harvest of early strawberries is one of the worst in the last five years. We see this in the dynamics of supply and prices on the site of our wholesale market. Earlier, even in years not too fruitful, strawberries would get cheaper from the first days of sales. This year, prices were sliding rather slowly in the first two weeks of the season due to limited supply. Negative dynamics further worsened after May 15," Shuvar's press service quoted head of Shuvar Analytics Department Tetiana Hetman as saying on May 18. This year's strawberries harvesting season in Ukraine started a week later than in 2019 (in early May).
"Most likely, we will see a more intense decline in prices in the coming days. However, it is clear that this season's feature will be a record high price for early berries. Unfortunately, not all producers will be able to profit off of this as some farms have lost a significant part of the crop over frost in the first half of May," the expert added.
However, despite price hikes, Ukrainian strawberries rather quickly ousted from the market berries from Greece and Spain. Wood strawberry prices stood at UAH 65-UAH 75 (US$2.45-US$2.83) per kilo at the Shuvar wholesale market in Lviv as of May 18. As UNIAN reported earlier, EastFruit experts earlier warned that Ukraine might be left without cherries and apricots due to April frosts.
Source: unian.info