Carmine Cavallaro is the owner of the Cavallaro Zucche company, which is specialised in the production and marketing of pumpkins. He shared with us some observations regarding the current campaign.
It is not a good period for the pumpkin campaign. “This year, we had many difficulties for the farming of this vegetable because of the climate conditions. Generally speaking, there is not enough produce for the markets. August rains caused the most damages: the daily rains resulted in a high humidity that facilitated fungus diseases which we find on the produce nowadays”.
As the fall season approaches, the market will be submerged by all that seasonal produce. “Sales did not increase at the end of October. The reason probably lies in the fact that the weather was very unusual for that period".
Bugs and parasites found within crops inevitably led to a production drop: “We already notice an unusual produce shortage. If things will remain the same, there is the possibility that we will resort to importing the produce in order to supply markets. The import is carried out from Spain, Portugal, France – even though they too had difficulties.”
“Prices are higher (0.40 euros/kg) than in 2017 – when there were a great availability and a greater quality of this produce. From May to August 2018, the pumpkin demand dropped, probably because of the prices of other produce. However, the demand seems to be increasing in these last days. This should compensate for the situation we experienced in the last period. The most marketed varieties are the Lunga di Napoli and the Moscata di Provenza”.