Tomato harvest has started in Antalya, the center for greenhouse tomato production in Turkey. Tomato seedlings were planted during the month of August and the growers have started receiving products in 3 months. Tomatoes were sold at Antalya wholesaler market for 0.50 USD per kg which is a strong contrast to tomato prices in September which has risen up to 1.5 USD per kg in major cities.
Antalya Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Wholesalers Association Chairman Nevzat Akcan: “The production of growers have increased by 100 – 150 % compared to previous year. That’s why we need to consider the profitability of the grower. If we push the prices down too much, then we won’t find any growers willing to grow tomatoes in the future. Then the prices will go even higher from its current levels.
The break even price for the grower is somewhere between 0.5 – 0.60 USD per kg, if his sale price drops below this figure, then he will grow other products next season.
Tomato production figures in Antalya have been declining consistently throughout the years. This year tuta absoluta disease was an additional factor which caused the supply to go down and inflated the prices. Open field tomatoes are all destroyed because of this disease.
Also there are additional problems for our growers especially in some export destinations such as Russia. Normally it takes around 5 days for truck to reach Russia passing through the customs. Now it takes more than 10 days which causes quality problems in the products. The main reason behind this extended delivery time is the problems at Russia customs which slow down our operations. We would like to ask government officials to help us in solving this problem. If we can solve this problem, we can improve our export figures to Russia and contribute even more to national economy in reducing the current account deficit.”
Growers have also supported the chairman in defending current price levels and indicating that any lower price point would be unacceptable for most growers.
However another important problem in tomato prices is the gap between the grower price and the retail price. The growers at Antalya and Mersin sell their tomatoes around 0.60 – 0.70 USD per kg whereas the sale price in Istanbul is around 1.75 USD per kg. Some particular tomato varieties are sold at 3.2 USD per kg.
Industry experts point out high profit margins of wholesalers and supermarket chains as the main source of this problem. They also point out that the prices will go down at retail soon with the new harvest of products. Additionally a new law is expected to be drafted to monitor and control the price gap between grower and retail.
Tomato was the product with the highest price increase during the month of September after its price increased by 35.2%. Current greenhouse harvest in Antalya is finally pushing its price down below 0.60 USD per kg level. Growers remarked that if there weren’t exports to Iraq, the price would have gone down to 0.40 USD per kg which would have driven a lot of growers out of business.
Source: Yeni Alanya / Hurriyet / Milat