Cucumbers: bright spot in poor greenhouse vegetable market

Cucumbers are selling well, but that is the only bright spot in the greenhouse vegetable market. Arie Middelburg from Advisory agency 'GreenMatch' does not have good news to report on the bell pepper, eggplant and tomato market. 

"Cucumbers are doing reasonably well right now," says Arie Middelburg from GreenMatch. "The second crop is now being harvested and the prices seem to be stabilizing around 30 cents. For this time of the year 30 cents is a good price," he says. "We had a lot of problems due to Southern Europe in May and June - more than in other years. But the effect is gone now. The weather is not bad so people still want to buy cucumbers."

Tomatoes

The situation is not as good for the other greenhouse vegetables. Tomato production has been high over the last week. "Last year was a really good year and until May this year things were going quite well. In the spring growers had to deal with a poor external environment. The light was poor up until the end of March. But this got better in June and in the past 3 to 4 weeks many growers have wiped away the backlog." The Merlice tomatoes raise average production figures each year. "The production figures are enormous."

However, the high tomato production is resulting in undue pressure on the market, "This occurs when all of Western Europe is well into production. Polish tomatoes are not allowed into Russia and the Russian boycott puts extra pressure on prices and supply in the Western European market. Since Poland cannot get rid of their tomatoes in Russia, Germany becomes the next destination. All of this results in bad prices for the tomatoes."

Bell peppers and eggplants

There is not much good to say about bell peppers either. "In recent weeks production has been high and therefore the pressure on the market is also high. That could be a little less, but we have now also entered the vacation period. Therefore you do not get shortages with less production like in the spring." An optimist might see a small bright spot in the slightly better eggplant prices, "Eggplant prices are slightly better," says Middelburg. "But this does not mean a true recovery is happening. So far it has been a bad year for this product and this small improvement in price is not going to make up for the rest of the year."


For more information:
Arie Middelburg
GreenMatch
middelburg@greenmatch.nl
www.greenmatch.nl