The current stone fruit season in Italy cannot be compared to any other year. If spring frosts usually felt like the Sword of Damocles on growers' heads in the past few years, this season the abundant rains and hailstorms in April and May have caused further damage, especially to the super-early varieties. "Whoever has product available this year is going to make a good living," says a grower from Puglia.
(Archive photo)
"We are now harvesting the early nectarines. They are very tasty, and the Brix value is good. In two weeks, we will move on to the medium-late varieties. We are also picking the first peaches. The situation now is better than at the beginning of the season, because back then very little super-early stone fruit was available due to the bad weather. Indeed, the excessive rain caused the fruit to crack. Even now it is still a little too cool for this time of the year, with mistral winds and local rains."
"The demand for peaches and nectarines is very high, especially for large gauges, which are in short supply in the face of a reduced product offering indeed in all of Italy. As the campaign progresses, the situation will not improve either as the demand will get higher and higher. As a result, by market law, prices are really high at the moment."
The demand for stone fruit has been both from the Italian market and from abroad. "At the moment we are struggling to meet the Italian demand, which means there are few or almost no volumes available for export."
According to the Apulian producer, this imbalance between supply and demand is expected to remain the same in the next years. "Emilia-Romagna has to recover from the mid-May floods, high production and labor costs and an increasingly scarce workforce."