“Looking back on the market, prices rose (too) slowly at the beginning of the season. After the onion day at the Rusthoeve, prices shot up because trade and the northern farmers became aware they were in a special situation. Trade and speculators tried to make the most of it,” Leon van Meir looks back in his newsletter. “The potato forward market responded to the dry weather much earlier, even though potatoes are less sensitive to dry weather than onions. A lot of onions were sold in that period. A lot of onions were packed and exported from September to November as well. Now that the onions are expensive, demand has fallen, perhaps the onions have become too expensive. Far destinations aren’t on the market yet, Africa might still buy some, but onions have actually become too expensive for this continent. People on that continent earn a fraction of what people earn in Europe.”
“Europe is gradually taking over the market, and it’s much easier for them to pay these high prices. Stocks are now only 7,000 tonnes per week, in previous years, export was around 17,000 to 18,000 tonnes per week in the second half of the season. In Europe, harvest yields are lower as well, so it’s almost inevitable that prices will rise even more. But there’s a dilemma. Older generations will remember the year 1976, like in 2018, this was a very dry year. The potatoes and onions were expensive in autumn then as well, but the spring ended with low prices. Conclusion: when something is expensive, things will go differently. Onions are now gradually coming to the Netherlands from Spain, China, India and the US. Egypt and New Zealand can’t wait to profit from the high prices with their harvests as well. Due to the lack sales and the imminent import it could all end differently than everyone expects. Growers tend to assume trade will know what to expect, but in this case, no one knows what will happen.”
Source: Nieuwsbrief Van Meir