Fruit growers find themselves in a contradictory situation this year. Although the harvest will be good, storing it will present problems. Fruit growers have been affected by an extraordinary rise in energy prices. “Many farmers don’t know whether they should fill the storage capacity, harvest or not harvest at all,” Martin Ludvik, president of the Czech Fruit Association, told Radioworld.
Fruit growers are reaping a good harvest this year, but due to higher energy prices, they may have trouble storing or processing it (illustration image) | Photo: Dagmar Heřtová | Source: Czech Radio
By what percentage have the energy costs of fruit growers increased this year? And how do they solve it?
It differs. Some still have fixed prices for next season, but of course they are on the decline and the price is going up significantly.
The Czech Republic has the highest energy prices in the entire European Union. We will not be able to compete in the common market, because apples will be imported to us from countries where energy is cheaper, says Martin Ludwik
Whereas in previous years the cost of the same average storage time of energy was roughly two crowns per kilogram, now there are companies advertising that the price will be somewhere around ten crowns per kilogram and maybe more. And see what has been happening in the stock markets in recent days.
Many farmers now do not know at all, right before harvesting, whether they should fill the storage capacity, harvest or not harvest at all.
How many fruit growers can higher energy prices lead to liquidation? Do you already have an estimate of how many apples it is best to leave on trees?
It must be said that storing apples requires a lot of energy. Apples are stored in one level. Keep in mind that it’s 20 degrees outside. When harvesting apples, you should cool them down to 1 degree and keep them that way for the entire storage period, which is usually half a year or more.
Apples are grown by more than 80 percent of fruit growers in our country, so the vast majority of them decide what to do with it. Those with constant energies will surely harvest and store the crop, which may only be about a third. In fact, two-thirds of farmers are waiting to see if the state will take action.
We only hear promises from our government that it wants to solve it at the European level, but we have not received any concrete idea of how to do it or what will happen.
Fruit cannot be stored at the current exchange rates. Even with different energy prices in each EU country and the highest in the Czech Republic, so we will not be competitive at all in the common market, because apples will be imported to us from the countries where the energy is. Cheaper.
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Can you guess the effect on the price of fruit in stores?
This is an interesting question, because more than 50 percent of table apples are imported into the Czech Republic. It will depend on the price of energy in other countries. This means costs that other farmers will incur, because Czech retail chains are logically interested only in price. If they have lower offers from abroad, they will prefer to buy apples from these countries.
It will certainly affect consumers in some way, but the question is to what extent. Even if the price for consumers is lower, which is good news for them, it will be only in the short term, because farmers will have to devote themselves to the cultivation of goods in our country, which do not consume much energy. And this mainly means raw materials – the cultivation of cereals and rapeseed, and not this special production.
What would help this situation?
This situation may help if energy prices stabilize, even before storage we know the price at which we will store energy for the next three quarters of the year, so that energy prices are very similar in individual countries in the EU, so that we have the same starting conditions when we fight for a common market . This is absolutely necessary.
And, of course, it is essential that energy prices do not rise or fall, so that apples are not offered at an inflated price. Because our goal is for consumers to buy fruit, not look at it.
