Prices for tomatoes, spinach, and peppers, have surged at least 20% in just one week due to frost in the Limpopo region that has caused severe damage to crops.
Last week, volumes of spinach and peppers delivered to fresh produce markets declined. This resulted in prices shooting up, Johnny van der Merwe, managing director of agricultural information group Agrimark Trends (AMT), said in his weekly video that tracks market prices for fresh produce.
During the past few weeks, Limpopo saw extreme instances of frost, which caused damage to crops including spinach, tomatoes, and peppers. Spinach was the worst affected vegetable among those tracked by AMT over the past week, with the price rocketing 27% to R5.13 per kilogram.
The price of tomatoes, which had begun to stabilise from recent highs caused by excessive rainfall that damaged crops earlier this year, shot up by more than 20% week on week. It’s still much lower than it was in April when it reached R19.52 per kilogram.
“The latest tomato price increased by 23% to R8.09 per kilogram with the cold weather resulting in volumes to decrease on the markets,” Van Der Merwe said.
Pieter van Zyl, regular market analyst for AMT, said the full impact of the recent frost damage in Limpopo is yet to be felt. “Last week was the third week in a row where tomato prices have risen, the lower sales volumes [during] the last week or two as a result of frost damage on Limpopo,” he said.
This will likely result in overall lower sales volumes for August, traditionally a month with the highest sales volumes of tomatoes. “I think this will change this month because of the frost damage about two weeks ago in Limpopo,” Van Zyl said.
Source: BusinessInsider
