"We cannot complain about the carrot market. There are sectors where things are worse," says outdoor vegetable trader Kees Heegsma from Lemmer. "With the early plots, we also started fairly early this year, and the early carrots are moving fairly smoothly. Prices for field crop carrots are currently between 18 and 20 cents."
"In the polders, yields are good. Recently, we also started harvesting in the southwest of the country, but yields there are not too great due to drought and virus pressure. Overall, however, we have had a fairly normal growing season. The early crop season in Limburg and the early plots in the polders are progressing satisfactorily. The follow-up seems to be developing normally in terms of cultivation. As for prices, it will depend on what happens in the countries around us."
© Heegsma
"In other years, sales during this period were really affected by holiday time, and there was hardly any movement, but that is not the case this year. We are already seeing demand from Italy and Eastern Europe, among others. Croatia is also showing up as a reasonably good market, and containers are going to overseas destinations. Only Senegal is not yet on the market for carrots, so hopefully we will see demand from there soon."
"Furthermore, we are already seeing some German demand for coarse carrots, which is remarkable, because last year Germany was absent from the market for the entire year, the first time that has happened in my career in carrots. In the years before that, we had pretty good carrot years, and our carrots were relatively expensive, which apparently did not suit them. The fact that some demand is already emerging now shows that they do not have too many carrots available."
© Heegsma
"At least in terms of quality, our carrots are holding up well, and the same goes for organic carrots, although that remains a relatively small market. In the Netherlands, the places where organic carrots are washed are fixed, so there is not much free trade outside of that. Prices for organic carrots are currently between $0.30 and $0.32. That is a reasonably good price, but certainly not excessive," Kees concludes.
For more information:
Kees Heegsma
Heegsma BV
Straatweg 74
8531 PZ Lemmer
Tel: +31 (0)514 56 92 24
M: +31 (0)6 53 24 48 28
[email protected]
www.heegsmabv.nl
