Crop Update March 2024

UK

The current situation in the UK is not good and plain to see.  With persistent rain making harvesting difficult and planting impossible many of the crops have been effected including parsnips, carrots, potatoes, winter and spring cabbage and cauliflower, the parsnip price has already doubled the seasonal normal and could double again.

The inability to plant effects this produce as the follow-on crop will be late plus all other spring crops, both salads and veg which cannot start growing until they get into the ground.

Farmers desperately need a dry spell, the longer the rain goes on the worse the situation will get.  This will mean importing in more stock from Europe than we usually would which will have a knock on in terms of price.

Europe

Last year we saw a lot of problems with produce not coming in from Morocco during  Ramadan which continues until the 10^th April.   Demand at Ramadan is high and the Moroccan Government have a market price ceiling for the domestic market so that if the market price goes over the minimum level then they restrict exports so the growers have to send crops into the home market thus pushing down the price. Last year exports were severely restricted which meant all of Europe was short of tomatoes.

Currently many crops are in the last cycle and are due to end by the end of April / early May. This will mean there will be a challenging time for some produce during the overlapping period until crops from northern Europe start producing in decent volume. We anticipate a difficult next couple of months in terms of supply, high prices and potentially quality and condition for certain produce.