“It's difficult for exporters to control what they buy,” said Ayse Ozler of Ozler Ziraat in Turkey. “The scale of fresh production is quite small, so within the buying system for export there aren't good ways of controlling what exporters buy.” Because there are so many small suppliers from which exporters get their produce, it's difficult to maintain uniform standards for all of the fruit and vegetables they export, especially when small growers aren't always forthcoming about what went into growing their produce. That can lead to problems when exporting to countries, like those in the EU, that have restrictions on the maximum residue levels which can be present on produce. Further complicating the situation is the the regulatory minefield that exporters have to traverse if they want to do business across multiple continents.
“Often, exporters don't just export to the European market,” said Ozler. “Typically, Turkish exporters ship to Europe, the Middle East and Russia, and when they buy products they might not have it in mind to ship to Europe, so they don't take those regulations into account, and it's only when they get an unexpected offer that they send product there.” That's led to some issues where produce coming out of Turkey has been deemed by EU countries to contain MRLs above what's allowed.
For Turkish citrus exporters, this season had additional complications related to domestic supplies of fruit. Warm weather during October, which is when the citrus season normally gets underway, delayed the start of the season by about six weeks. When the season got underway in December, the warm weather made for sluggish demand, noted Ozler. On top of that, when lemon exporters tried to secure fruit for the export season, they found it extremely hard to acquire product.
“The lemon harvest came to an early end due to frost,” said Ozler. “So local people began to collect up supplies of lemons and that made local prices go up. We exporters weren't able to find any lemons for export, and when we did find them we could only get them for ridiculous prices.”
For more information:
Ayse Ozler
Özler Ziraat
Tel: +90-322-454-77-41
Email: ayseozler@gmail.com
www.hasat.net