This week, the cost of tomatoes in Ukraine set a new record. According to Info-Shuvar analysts, the last wave of price hike stopped prices at around 24-30 UAH / kg. (0.8-1.0 euro / kg) for red tomatoes and 38-40 UAH / kg. (1.2-1.3 euro / kg) for pink and yellow.

Farmers in the southern regions of Ukraine are already harvesting tomatoes of open ground, which are sold at 15-17 UAH / kg (0.5-0.56 euro / kg), which is also very expensive. Last year, both greenhouse and ground tomatoes cost 2.5-3 times less.

Such high prices for tomatoes can be explained by a number of reasons. The steady cloudy weather does not contribute to increasing the sample. The largest greenhouse farms in Transcarpathia were left without a crop due to the flood. Farmers in the south of Ukraine report a delay in the mass harvest of vegetables and the constant temperature changes that lead to disease.

Another reason is the reduction in the area under ground tomatoes due to a decrease in demand from processors.

All this led to the expansion of imports of tomatoes. In the first half of this year, the country purchased 55 thousand tons of tomatoes, which is 15% more than it was in the same period of 2018 and twice as much as in the first half of 2017. The opposite trend is observed in the export of tomatoes.

In the first half of this year, Ukrainian producers supplied less than 1 thousand tons of tomatoes to the foreign market, which is 3 times less than in 2018 and 5 times less than in the first half of 2017.