President of Sera-Bir Müslüm Yanmaz: "Tomato will be 50 TL this winter"
Müslüm Yanmaz, President of Sera-Bir, underlined that producer sales prices have doubled and noted that tomatoes will reach record sales prices of 50 liras this winter.
Increasing costs are being felt hard on food inflation. Müslüm Yanmaz, President of the Greenhouse Investors and Producers Association (Sera-Bir), who was a guest of the Agriculture-Analysis program, made evaluations. Stating that costs have increased 3 times, Yanmaz said,
"With an energy cost that has increased by 238 percent and a fertilizer cost that has increased by 250 percent, we should not sell tomatoes below 50 TL this year. There are no tomatoes in the world between December and April. We have been doing this business for 30 years. When the winter months come, everyone will stand up because of tomato prices. Tomato price will be 50 TL."
Yanmaz continued his statements:
''The excessive rise in energy costs is not only a matter of Turkey, energy prices have increased significantly all over the world. Greenhouses in Europe have become unable to produce due to high energy costs and natural gas cuts. Now, producers from Europe, especially from the Netherlands, come to us and want to do contract farming with us. They come 2 months in advance and ask us to close the whole season at 2 euros per kilogram by making contracted production.
Closing at 2 euros means that this tomato will be 50-60 TL. There is no product in Europe, especially in the December-April period. In the past, Europe used to buy tomatoes from us in the April-December period and apply quotas to us in May because they had their own product. Now it will not be able to apply quotas because there are no tomatoes. Last year the cost of tomatoes was 10 TL on average, but this year it will vary between 16-20 TL. In coal-heated greenhouses, the cost will exceed 20 TL.
We are very scared because we are completely export-oriented. We export to Europe and Russia. We give 10-15 percent of the products we grow to the domestic market. We export 85-90 percent. When the export channels are closed and the product accumulates inside, greenhouse growers who invest 60-100 thousand dollars per decare will suffer losses. That's why we are really afraid
There is no production in Europe this year. Fertilizer price increased by 250 percent. Other costs have increased by 230 percent. There is no product, but everyone will demand this product. And with this demand, the price of our products will rise. We see this. The cost is high, so the price will also be high.''