BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 14
Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
The 2020/21 season will definitely be less profitable for potato farmers in Georgia, Trend reports via the EastFruit portal.
The first lots of early potatoes from greenhouses have already appeared on the market, prices for 2020’s harvest potatoes are significantly lower than those of last year, said the report.
Farmers associate the low price of potatoes in the first quarter of 2021 with rich harvest in 2020 and a decrease in demand due to the lack of tourists and the shutdown of the HORECA sector. The rich harvest was due to favorable climatic conditions, as well as an increase in the area cultivated with potatoes in 2020. This is indirectly confirmed by a significant increase in imports of seed potatoes.
The consumer price index for potatoes is also at an all-time low. The indicator for the first quarter of 2021 is 8 percent lower than the average indicator for the same period of 2015–2020 (95.48) and constitutes 88.27 units. On a monthly basis, March 2021 index is 33 percent lower than in the same period in 2020.
Despite 2020 being a good year for potatoes in Georgia, imports of potatoes were 27 percent higher as of the end of February 2021 than in the previous season. Moreover, despite the downward trend in prices for potatoes in Georgia, imports increased every month. The volume of potato imports at the end of February was at record levels over the past three seasons. The main, and the only supplier of potatoes to Georgia during this period was Turkey, where prices for tubers were even lower.
Potato imports will most likely still be lower at the end of the 2020/21 season than in the previous season, because more than 9,000 tons of potatoes were imported to Georgia from March through May 2020.
Along with the import of marketable potatoes, the import of seed potatoes also increased significantly in 2020 – by 214 percent compared to the previous year. Seed potatoes were imported mainly from Germany and the Netherlands both this and last season. Turkey has also increased its export of seed potatoes to Georgia.
The new potato season in Georgia will start in June.
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