Rocketing brassica prices in South Africa

Brassica prices are sky high in South Africa at the moment. From a peak of R300 (€20.51) for a box of ten heads of broccoli or cauliflower, prices have softened to a current R150 (€10.25) to R280 (€19.14), depending on quality, for the same at the Johannesburg municipal fresh produce market.

At the Pretoria market prices are slightly lower due to lower demand and resistance to the prices: R20 (€1.36) for a single head of grade 1 broccoli, down from R25 (€1.70) earlier this week. Cabbage goes for R100 (€6.83) to R120 (€8.20) for a 20kg bag. Red cabbage is fairly scarce; fewer producers grow red cabbage for which there isn’t a big market.

“Brassica prices are about the highest they have ever been,” Cor Christie, a RSA Group agent at the Pretoria market, tells FreshPlaza.

According to Johnny van der Merwe of AMT, the price of cabbage is 43% higher than a month ago, with sales 18% down from last week and an expectation of further rising prices at the Johannesburg market.

Consumers get the short end of the stick: a single head of broccoli retails from about R20 (€1.36) to a hefty R40 (€2.73). A 700g bag of loose cauliflower florets goes for R44.99 (€3.07) at an upmarket retailer; the average weight of a cauliflower head at the fresh market is between 500g and 800g and goes for between R25 (€1.70) and R28 (€1.91) at the largest fresh market in the country, Johannesburg.

“Early in the season there was some hail but the big problem came with the enormous rain at the start of the year. Many vegetable fields were just drowned. In totality the market has been undersupplied,” explains Jaco Oosthuizen, RSA Group managing director. “The demand is much higher than supply.”

Bill Kerr, vegetable production expert and seed breeder, says that severe nitrogen leaching also occurred during the heavy rains, strongly depressing yield for some growers.

Furthermore, Oosthuizen continues, vegetable farmers in KwaZulu-Natal have problems with clubroot disease, a common fungal disease of the Brassicaceae family that has been present for many years, but seems to have intensified this season.

Carl Gathmann of Aussicht Farm, who markets his mixed vegetable crop under his VegWorx brand, says: “Once it gets into your soil, that’s it – you have to keep the soil clear from broadleaved weeds for 20 years. Every brassica farmer I know of in KwaZulu-Natal has this problem. We don’t know if it was brought on by the weather, but we know it is carried by water. Our water reserves are very low, our dam levels are lower than last year – we have had a drought for three years now – and we suspect that the clubroot spores are present at higher levels and at a higher concentration in the irrigation water.”

For the past 8 or 9 weeks his farm hasn’t had brassica product. “We plant 2ha a week of broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage on about 80ha annually, and the disease seems to be easing off as the weather becomes cooler.”

In the Eastern Cape the disease is also a feature of brassica farming but hasn’t presented such a problem as in KwaZulu-Natal. According to Clinton Krull of the seed company Starke Ayres, brassica stunting disorder (BSD) has been more of a problem for the last couple of seasons than clubroot. Unlike clubroot disease, BSD is a much more recent arrival in the country and attacks cabbages, reducing the quality and marketability of the product.

In the Eastern Cape brassica production is also down because of reduced acreage under brassicas in the face of the lingering drought and low dam levels. Production of brassicas, which are cool weather crops, ought to increase countrywide during the cooler winter months.

For more information:

Jaco Oosthuizen

RSA Group

Tel: +27 11 613 4391

Email: jo@rsa.co.za

http://www.rsa.co.za

Bill Kerr

AlphaSeed

Tel: +27 16 366 0616

Email: alphaseed@lantic.net

Carl Gathmann

Aussicht Farm/VegWorx