The European apple crop may be weaker than expected

Not only will the yield be less, the quality may also be lower (Photo: Pixabay)

According to the organization’s summary on its website, the continent’s apple harvest could be 12.076 million tons, after most European countries revised their estimates downwards in August. The decline was partly caused by high production costs, as the rising cost of electricity made storage unaffordable, so many people gave up harvesting. They added that the labor shortage was already a serious problem before the epidemic, but now those who employed Ukrainian seasonal workers were also in trouble. According to the announcement, the extremely hot and dry summer was not good for the plantations either, some of the European apples became smaller and of lower quality due to the extreme weather. The challenges worsen the competitiveness of the economies, and in several countries their survival is in danger, they wrote.

The situation isn’t good at home either

According to the organization’s previous statement, the prospects are not good in Hungary, as in most of the states of the continent, with 300-350 thousand tons, the weakest apple crop of the last 10 years is expected. Last year, 520,000 tons of apples were harvested domestically. Based on the data of the Central Statistical Office (KSH), only in 2011 was the harvest even weaker than this year, below 300,000 tons, while the decade’s record was broken in 2014 with almost 780,000 tons. At the same time, the European estimate for 2022 is not considered weak, as it is almost identical to last year’s crop volume and exceeds the average of the last 3 years by almost 10 percent – wrote FruitVeb when presenting WAPA’s previous estimate.

MTI