Vegetable imports too expensive for Ukraine

Vegetable imports have become too expensive for Ukrainian consumers after the devaluation of the loc…

Vegetable imports have become too expensive for Ukrainian consumers after the devaluation of the local currency, the Hryvnia. This has brought increasingly more demand for domestic produce and one of the fresh products that has seen a sharp increase in production is cauliflower. Up to 2014, very few people were growing the brassica commercially, and if they did, it was generally meant as a raw material for processing, usually frozen.

"The consumption of imported cauliflowers in Ukraine has been declining for several years due to the increase in domestic production, which has been seeing an increase of around 2.3%, year on year," said Tetiana Getman from 'Info-Shuvar'.

"Small amounts of production volumes to external markets were shipped from Ukraine last year, slightly more than 40 tons, but for the first time ever, nearly 70% of the volume was shipped to Estonia and Poland."

According to State statistics, Ukraine harvested 27K tons of cauliflowers in 2016 and imported an additional 400 tons. This was 3-4 times higher than just 3 years ago.

"We expect imports to continue to decline in 2017. This year, during the peak import period for cauliflower (January and February), Ukraine imported 180 tons, 10% less than the same period in 2016. We also expect that cauliflower production and exports should continue to grow as long as the weather cooperates. Last year we noticed an increased demand for exporting our cauliflower in May and November."