The price of potatoes in Serbia rose 193% since 2021 due to last year’s drought and large-scale imports, which discouraged domestic production. According to Agro-Mobile company director Ratko Vukićević, the potato harvest in 2020 had set a new record and producers used potatoes to feed livestock, or they threw them away. Last year’s drought caused a significant decline in supply as enormous volumes of potatoes were imported, Vukićević added.
He said that in 2020 wholesalers sold a kilogram of potatoes for RSD15-20 and that they could not be sold, so producers threw them away, and that last year a kilogram of potatoes cost about RSD50 (€0.43). He added that, in 2021, around 50,000 tons of potatoes were imported, mostly from France, and this spring, around 10,000 tons were imported monthly, causing many to abandon production.
According to Vukićević, it was very difficult to sell potatoes to large foreign retail chains in Serbia and that the sale of the vegetable in these stores was steeped in corruption, while quality played no role in their decisions.
Source: euractiv.com