Photo of beets - from Igor Popov, beet grower
According to the MAIA Crop Production Policy Department, at the moment the harvest has not been harvested from 2-2.2 thousand hectares of sugar beets and more than a hundred hectares of vegetables, mainly carrots and onions, as well as potatoes.
With the warming, predicted at the end of this week and the beginning of next week, and, accordingly, intensive snow melting and soil overwatering, the output of heavy agricultural machinery will become even more difficult.
The thaw will also negatively affect the quality of products. Thus, farmers note that the level of physical contamination of sugar beet, arriving in the second half of February to factories, is determined at the level of 20% and higher. This affects the purchase price of raw materials, as well as the recoverability of sugar and its cost price.
The situation with the remaining vegetable crop in the field is even worse, it is likely to be lost. If sugar beet from last year’s crop is contracted and, in fulfillment of contracts, is accepted by processors, traders buy vegetables “from the free market” – from the situation, as needed.
In February, prices for many vegetables of “borscht set” in Moldova remain at a stable low level, and the demand for them on the part of wholesale and household consumers is relatively low.
Earlier, Logos Press wrote that resource suppliers note an extremely low rate of sales of vegetable seeds in winter of this year, i.e. at the peak of the marketing season. They predict a sharp decline in vegetable production in Moldova in 2026.
