Orange Market Digest w4

Weekly Orange Market Updates

Main Price Movements in the EU

Through our representatives' activity in the main wholesale markets for fresh produce across Europe, we have observed that the post-festivities negative price trend is over. Demand is revived by now, yet not significantly. In any case, the suboptimal pigmentation of fruits due to the heatwaves that occurred deep in the “cooling” period of the year (spanning October and November) has led to significant limitations in the availability of high-quality oranges. 

As a result, a general steadiness with slight increases in oranges of some origins has been noted. The following data from the EU-Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development agree with this notion:

The Aging Workforce Harms the Prospects of Japanese Citrus

The Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of Agriculture recently published a report underscoring an alarming trend's immediacy and tangible impact. The fast aging of the agricultural workforce used to constitute a matter of cliched discussions among the sector’s experts, affluent in cliched alarmist expressions but no actual proposals for its curbing.

Yet now, the results of this trend are so intense that they can be quantified, and the fall in activity in the Japanese citrus sector testifies to that. The line of reasoning is simple, and we have previously stressed it. The high uncertainty around the viability of an operator’s business leaves no room for consideration to their offspring as to whether their parents’ venture could constitute a venture worth basing their livelihood on. As a result, young people, who typically foster the adoption of more modern and efficient business processes, follow different career paths, while the results of their parents’ business gradually fade together with their courage to keep up with the ever-evolving market.

Young Farmers for the Revitalization of the Role of Agriculture

High-level representatives of the sector in Italy stress again this year, as it usually goes for Mediterranean countries, that there is a dire need for improvisation of domestic infrastructure. Our experience in Italy and elsewhere suggests that limitations imposed on suppliers and buyers from extended lead times hinder their maximum production and commercial capacities.

However, the notion of infrastructure does not just entail the condition and effectiveness of the design of highways and railway systems; irrigation systems and the condition of the electricity grid, among others, also fall under the state’s responsibility. As we saw, failures in those systems often result in destructive results for local communities, like the inability to irrigate crops observed in Spain in previous months.

Young operators in that country made a big step toward addressing the previous issues by organizing with other farmers in the Elche region to communicate such issues to authorities. Developments as such are positive and act as reminders to the market’s participants that there are factors that stem from the supply side and disperse inefficiencies across the market, harming all its operators, unlike factors like the high concentration of market power that harms mainly farmers and end consumers, occasionally resulting in the deliberate underreporting on the issue.