Afyon, a city in western Turkey, is responsible for 10% of the cherry production in Turkey. As the cherries start to blossom, it becomes a visual treat for the visitors with its beauty. The white blossoms stay on the trees for at most 2 weeks and make the trees resemble bridal gowns.
Mayor Osman Acar: “We are expecting a good quality and quantity of produce and hopefully good prices. That’s the expectation of our growers. The cherry trees started to blossom about 20 days earlier this season as the weather has been hotter than usual so far. Now our fields are all in white and then it will turn all cherry red. Visually it is a breathtaking sight.
It is important that we do not experience an unexpected frost in the upcoming days. We are growing the best quality of cherry in Turkey but our cherries always come later in the season thus our growers cannot benefit from the early season high prices. Hopefully this will be the year we can also benefit from this.
The winter was very cold in Europe this year so we expect the cherry production in Europe to be lower than usual. Consequently that creates an opportunity for exports. We will have about 25 to 30 thousand tons of cherry at export quality.
We are also meeting with some intermediary firms to start exporting to China. As the flight distance to China is quite far, it is a difficult market to export to however we are doing our best to make this trade lane happen. China currently imports cherries from Chile and the US, two countries which are
the same distance from China as we are, so it can be done. Per the trade agreement for food between two countries, we hope Chinese people will start purchasing our products. If that happens, then we will not have any market problems anymore for our products.”
Source: AA