Hungary is experiencing its driest seven months since 1901, with almost half of the average rainfall missingContinue reading
Estimates of low grape yields and grape price forecasts awaiting approval by wine regions justify significantly higher grape prices than last year during this year’s harvest, which will start soon, the Ministry of Agriculture announcezd on Monday.
The National Council of the Wine Communities in Hungary has prepared its grape price forecasts for this year, which show what average prices are expected for the autumn harvest. It is now up to the wine regions to make the final decision on the forecast for their area, which is important because it is a good reference point for both producers and buyers.
As no exceptionally good grape harvest is expected in Europe this year, the Ministry of Agriculture shares the professional opinion that there will be a demand for Hungarian grapes and Hungarian wine. The grape price forecast reflects the impact of the low wine stock, which is also markedly low in a multi-year comparison, and the expected low grape harvest of 3.7 million hectares.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, producer prices should in real terms be 10-20% higher than last year, but much depends on the wine region, the grape variety, and the quality of the grapes.
Hungary, like many other European countries, has been hit by drought this summer, which has had a severe impact on yields. In many parts of the country, corn fields are drying up and farmers are unable to harvest much of anything, with serious losses to be expected.
In the Great Hungarian Plain, in the central and eastern part of Hungary, 300,000 hectares of maize and 200,000 hectares of sunflowers have been destroyed by drought.
With these two crops alone, the loss to farmers is at least HUF 400 billion (EUR 995 million).
At the same time, in the western part of the country, the Transdanubian region, there are medium and high yielding areas due to more rainfall.
The drought has not spared Hungary’s raspberry crop either, with fresh raspberry deliveries down 13% in the first five months of 2022 and no fresh raspberries left for export. Although production has fallen due to the drought, prices have risen, with a kilogram of domestic raspberries costing between HUF 2,000 and 3,000 this year.
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