At the beginning of March European Commision introduced minimal prices for frozen strawberries imported from China with the price level set up at 684 €/mt. What does it mean for Polish producers of strawberries for processing? Minimal price is better at no market regulation at all, but at current situation price proposal of European Commision doesn¡¯t guarantee decent returns.

Taking into account, that the price of raw material bought by processors equals to 60% of the final price of frozen strawberries, the maximum price processors can pay growers will amount to 0,26 €/kg (with the exchange rate 3,9 PLN for 1 €) - calculates Grzegorz Klimek from the Research Institute of Pomology and Floriculture in Skierniewice. According to the calculation of the National Research Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics in Poland, processing strawberries production costs ¨C with the yield 9 MT per hectare - in Poland amounted to 0,54 €/kg in 2006, including the cost of fruit picking at 0,16 €/kg.

Summarizing, it will be necessary to pick up at least 14-15 MT of fruits per hectare in 2007 just to refund costs of production. And this will be difficult in case of strawberries for processing grown on small acreage which still dominates in Polish farms (in 2005 there were only 3100 farms with strawberry acreage larger than 2 hectares). The consequence will be the third year of unprofitable production. As the result Polish production of strawberries for processing can significantly decrease.

Publication date: 4/13/2007

 

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