Longer melon season in Hungary

Thanks to the past two seasons, the area planted with melons in Europe, including in our country, has decreased, it no longer reaches 3,000 hectares, said Péter Kelemen, the executive director of FruitVeB, at the event promoting domestic melon consumption held in Zamárdi on the opening day of the Beach Festival. The decrease in the cultivated area can be traced primarily to the labor shortage. Despite the more favorable melon prices than last year, the area under melon production in the country is not expected to increase, however, they expect a reorganization: smaller producers may shrink, while larger ones may increase their production area. The latter can somewhat mechanize the harvest and employ the workforce throughout the year. Growing costs, especially the tripling of the price of fertilizer, are also a serious challenge for melon growers. Due to the significant increase in costs, only those producers who were able to achieve a high yield with adequate irrigation can be ...