The year for produce sales is coming to an end in Armenia and the results are rather preoccupying. True, the Ministry of Agriculture is optimistic and is trying to make citizens of Armenia more optimistic, but the numbers differ.
It’s clear that the people are going to have problems with produce and the prices in the winter due to the dryness this year. This time of the year (including August) is considered to be the “cheapest”. Cheap produce has helped lower the prices of produce as a whole. Nothing like that happened this year. Even the statistics department has noticed the high inflation rates of produce.
Currently, all villages are harvesting the crop. The main produce is grapes, potatoes, tomatoes, pepper, cucumbers, etc. and these are the products mainly used by citizens. Villagers expect to see 170,000 tons of grape crops this year. Due to this year’s heat, grapes are starting to grow early this year. Grapes usually grow starting from September 20 in Armenia. Even laying-in has begun and 400 tons of grapes have already been laid-in. The “Yerevan Brandy Factory” has already announced the prices-1 kilogram of grapes ranges from 123-130 drams. According to experts, the price for laid-in grapes won’t exceed 140 drams a kilogram. But the price for one kilogram of grapes costs double the amount in markets. Villagers and agriculture ministry officials assure that the dryness hasn’t had an influence on the growth of the grapes. Despite the fact that it’s expected to see 5-6,000 tons of grapes this year, however the price of grapes has gone up compared to last year. Experts say that the total inflation of the country has something to do with this, while sellers at the market say that there weren’t that many grapes this year, just like the rest of the products. 60% of grapes have been laid-in this year and the rest have been sold in the market. This year it’s expected that factories will lay-in 95,000 tons of grapes.
Generally, it can be said that grain is the necessary product and experts expect to see a downfall in the production of grain by 100,000 tons. This year, 280,000 tons of grain has been collected compared to the 397,000 tons last year. So, it’s going to be 30% less. Every year, 650,000 tons of grain is sold in Armenia and nearly half of that grain is imported from Russia. There wasn’t a lot of grain produced in Russia this year and that’s surely going to take a toll on wheat production in Armenia, thus prices for bread. It’s quite possible that Armenians will pay more for bread in the fall.
Potato harvesting ends soon. Experts are waiting to see potato crops reach last year’s 460,000 ton mark. They assure that the dry season hasn’t had an influence on the potato crops either, but it has had an influence on prices because potato prices went up nearly double this year. The agriculture ministry officials don’t agree with this and have their explanation.
“Most of the potatoes of last fall and this winter have been exported. You could see the change in prices starting from spring of this year in the market and it stayed at the same level. Each year, after the first harvest of potatoes, the new is sold with the old. But there were no old potatoes this year due to the exports. There weren’t a lot of potatoes starting from early spring and that caused a cause for alarm in markets. The same may happen next spring. However, this fall potato prices may go down just a little after the harvest,” says head of the botany department of the Ministry of Agriculture Garnik Petrosyan.
Currently, the price for one kilogram of potatoes ranges from 180-300 drams. The villagers selling their products say that the reason for the high prices is the low harvest. So what we see is a difference in opinions of the villagers and the agriculture ministry officials. Who’s telling the truth? The ministry officials, who have always tried to look on the brighter side of things, or the villagers, who reason that the harvest wasn’t good? One thing’s for sure: the dry season couldn’t’ have not had an influence on the harvest as a whole. No matter how much irrigation there is in some regions, the dry season still has an influence, especially for villagers who complain about the flow of water, saying that it comes on and off. So, we won’t really be able to buy potatoes for 130-140 drams a kilogram. In a word, this is worrisome and it’s clear that the prices will remain the same until the next harvest.
Dry season and hay
Forage is also worrisome. The only forage left after the Soviet Union is grass. Today, no villager feeds his cow unhealthy food and we have nothing to complain about from this perspective because the meat and milk from cows is ecologically clean. The villagers do say that the dry season had its influence on the hay. Whereas the price for one stack of hay ranged from 400-500 AMD a couple of years ago, now it ranges from 800-1,000 drams a stack. In the highlands, one ton of hay costs 30,000-35,000 drams, while it costs 40,000-45,000 drams in the Ararat valley. According to Garnik Petrosyan, Armenia has stored 1.2-1.3 million tons of hay. This year, there was 30% less hay, meaning that 30% of cattle will remain without food come winter. But there are 500-600,000 large cattle in Armenia. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but barely 100-150,000 cows will remain without hay, which will lead to the killing of cows and high prices for milk, and so on and so on.