According to the EastFruit daily monitoring project the prices for potatoes in the Russian Federation has dropped by an average of 20% since the beginning of last week alone.
At the moment, quality products are going on sale for 8-12 rubles / kg ($ 0.12-0.18 / kg) depending on the variety and region, and growers acknowledge that prices higher than 10 rubles / kg ($ 0.15 / kg) are quite rare.
The reason for such low prices is the market oversupply, triggered by another increase in the country’s potato production. Many small farms have already started to sell potatoes from storage, given the rapid deterioration in product quality.
Given this situation, a number of farms have decided to abandon sales in anticipation of likely improvements in the market situation.
It is worth noting that at the moment, potato prices in Russia are on average 20% lower than in the first half of December 2017. At the same time, market participants are quite pessimistic. According to them, given the product’s huge availability, there is no reason to expect prices to rise in the near future.
