“Poland has a lot of carrots, which is why we're losing turnover”

The carrot trade is quite mild this year. “Carrot is only being shipped to markets overseas, such as Africa and Cyprus, but those destinations cannot carry the load. European countries have no demand at all,” says Paul van der Linde. “And that is remarkable. In previous years, two or three European countries were always on the market, but everyone has their own stocks right now.”

“Especially Poland has a lot of carrot. They have so many, they are even supplying neighbouring countries. We normally hope Poland enters the market in February, but as it is looking now, they will arrive at the end of the season, if at all. And all in all that makes quite a significant difference in the export volume,” Van der Linde continues. “Our biggest challenge is to get rid off our carrot properly. At first it seemed we would have a great harvest, but storage carrot has not done anything in the past three weeks. We are getting good yields, but not great ones. That would normally be promising for the market situation, but we are now losing so many sales due to the Polish supply, that those few crates less per hectare do not make much difference.”

“This means that we do not have high hopes on the carrot market this year. This does not mean it is going to be an extremely bad year, but I certainly do not expect a repeat of the good prices of the previous two seasons. Currently, the early carrot (field crop) is being sold at 7 cents,” Van der Linde concludes. “Quality will not be the problem. In other years, we saw much more damage from mice, but that is not the case this year.”