The second half of winter is usually the period of highest vegetable seed sales, which “shapes the architecture of the whole season”. But this year, January sales of seeds of many vegetables are very weak, noted for Logos Press Sergei Alba, an expert of Expert Agroteh, a company specializing in the sale of professional-level seeds for vegetable production.
Even large farms specializing in the cultivation of vegetables, in particular, the “borscht set”, are strictly optimizing costs. They reduce sown areas and purchase “the minimum amount of inputs, favoring the most budget-friendly agro-technological solutions”.
Why is this happening?
Vegetable market operators in Moldova agree that the main reason for the potential reduction of local production of a rather long list of vegetables is a significant drop in prices for them in the second half of last year and at the beginning of this year.
For example, it is extremely difficult for farmers to find buyers for cabbage even taking into account the fact that the current wholesale “demand price” (very sluggish) does not exceed 2-2.5 lei/kg, which is already below the production cost.
A similar situation is observed for onions. Judging by the monitoring of east-fruit.com portal, in January-February of this year, the wholesale price for yellow onions on the Moldovan market is one and a half to two times lower than in the same period of 2024-25.
By the way, overcrowding and low prices for some basic types of “borscht set” vegetables and potatoes are a problem not only in Moldova, but also in many European countries. Including neighboring Ukraine. The above-mentioned portal writes about cases of free potato distribution in Germany due to the record harvest, as well as the opinion of Ukrainian vegetable growers about the prospect of “forced reduction of vegetable cultivation”.
Farmers will take up melons
Nature, after all, does not like emptiness. Having reduced the production of cabbage, onion, tomato and cucumber, some farmers are likely to reorient to the cultivation of other vegetable and, especially, melon crops.
According to Sergey Alba, the top sellers of seeds for harvest-2026 are: watermelon and melon, eggplants, carrots, beets and sweet (cube-shaped) pepper.
