"It remains bleak with lettuce prices," sighs Henk van Doorne. The Westlander is 76 now, but still handles sales for some growers and keeps a small garden of his own. Yet the veteran in the trade calls lettuce sales worrying. "The low sales seem to be becoming more and more structural. There is less and less interest in our beautiful product."
"At the moment, we are facing a large supply from Belgium and don't know where to go with our product. From Westland, we supply a fair amount of lettuce to wholesalers who collect it for the Amsterdam region. But if you see that all those wholesalers are not even able to sell 6,000 heads of lettuce a week in such a large region, and you translate those figures to the national picture, the sales opportunities are very limited, especially since heavy lettuce is not an export product."
"With polysla, every now and then a small batch goes for export, but overall it is laborious. Quite a bit of lettuce also comes from the Palatinate region, though they too have had a lot of rain there, too. And competition is strong. If you raise prices even slightly, you are immediately punished. The price of jumbosla fluctuates heavily, from thirty cents to forty-five, but also back down to twenty."
"All in all, I would prefer a positive story, but it remains a struggle. I find the whole vegetable business wearisome. Tomatoes and peppers have also fetched mediocre prices this year, and courgettes have been impossible to find. What troubles me most is that you cannot build anything up under these circumstances. If you were 20 years younger and had to endure all that, it would be hard to swallow," continues the experienced trader.
In terms of cultivation, he says the lettuce season is running without too many problems. "Fusarium remains a concern, but breeders are working hard on it. And if you rotate crops on time, that definitely has a positive effect in preventing an outbreak from getting out of hand."
For more information:
Henk van Doorne
Van Doorne Imex
Noordlandseweg 60-62
2691 KM 's-Gravenzande
Tel: +31 (0) 174 417989
Mob: +31 (0) 6 26068284
