Tomato prices delight growers in Antalya, the center for greenhouse tomato production in Turkey. Aksu Growers Association Chairman Turan Sahin: “We had a very good season so far and we were able to recover our past losses. We need to continue high quality of products in the future and the rise of value of the USD has consequently increased prices of seedlings which we were importing from abroad, so this remains a challenge for growers.”
Tomato prices remained high throughout the season, however, due to suboptimal weather conditions there was a decline in productivity in the region. Especially tornadoes have hit the greenhouses hard on the western part of Antalya, and many growers lost tons of their products as a result. Minister of Finance and Treasury Berat Albayrak has intervened quickly to ensure a quick recovery for growers, and within 4 days nearly 6 million USD is paid to growers by the government insurance organizations, so the growers can quickly rebuild their greenhouses and start production again.
As production costs have increased and weather conditions were less than desirable, as mentioned above, tomato prices in the local market never went below 0.5 USD per kg at the wholesale hall. On the export market, the prices varied between 0.5 USD – 0.8 USD per kg. High price levels were a nice consolation for growers after the aforementioned problems and they are looking forward to next season already.
Aksu Growers Association Chairman Turan Sahin: “In the last 7-8 years, tomato growers in this region were unable to earn enough money, and we finally saw a change in this trend this season. As everybody knows, tomato growers have experienced a lot of difficulties, especially since 2015. The political crisis with Russia in 2015 has resulted in the halt of tomato imports from Turkey by Russia. Russia was the main export destination for tomato growers, and this has caused significant problems for us. We were not able to find new export markets to replace the volumes we have sold to Russia, and many growers were forced to turn to the domestic market. This in turn created an oversupply and drove the prices down to 5 -6 eurocents per kg, which was nearly 60% less than the breakeven price for growers.
"Due to this issue, growers avoided purchasing high-quality seeds next season in 2017, in an effort to lower production costs but consequently production quality has suffered. In 2018, the loss of the value of the Turkish currency against USD escalated production costs even further, and production costs almost tripled for some cost items. As a result, growers started experimenting with cheaper seedlings, fertilizers and chemicals. On top of that, weather conditions were also not as good as we had hoped in 2018, and consequently many growers have ended up with a loss at the end of the year.
"This year, growers were finally able to recoup their financial losses of past years. The political problems with Russia have been solved as well, so this attractive export destination is again open for our tomatoes. Instead of criticizing growers for high prices, the public needs to understand the reality of the increasing production costs, and the government needs to keep supporting growers so we can keep producing high-quality products and continue to contribute to our national economy by exporting huge volumes.”
Source: Haberler