Economy

Why cucumbers became “golden”: expert names the main factor

FORECAST

The Ukrainian vegetable market is experiencing the expected autumn rise in prices, with cucumbers rising particularly fast, but this year, not only seasonality has become a key factor shaping prices. Economist Oleg Pendzin in a commentary [Kommersant] explains the sharp rise in the cost of cucumbers by the critical dependence on energy supply.

He emphasizes that greenhouse vegetables require large amounts of electricity, and with rolling blackouts and the transition to expensive diesel generators, the cost of production increases many times over.

“There is only one reason for this – the season is over. Look, what kind of cucumbers do we have? Greenhouse cucumbers. What is a greenhouse? It’s electricity. When we talk about electricity, you see what happens to blackouts. Diesel electricity is, accordingly, much more expensive,” said Oleg Pendzin.

According to the expert, the future of prices for other vegetables also directly depends on the energy situation:

“It all depends on whether the power will be cut off or not, because the winter will show how the agricultural sector will work in reality,” he concluded.

To recap, earlier [Kommersant] wrote earlier that potato prices may rise in Ukraine in the next few months.

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