This year’s watermelon season in Hungary promises an excellent harvest

Published 2024년 6월 18일

Tridge summary

The article highlights the anticipated earlier start of the watermelon season this year due to favorable weather conditions and advancements in farming techniques, leading to a promising harvest for Hungarian producers. Despite lower fertilizer prices, they still face rising labor costs. Climate change impacts on Mediterranean countries are pushing buyers to source watermelons from various places, creating more export opportunities for Hungary. Hungary is expected to cultivate around 140-160,000 tons of watermelons and 10-12,000 tons of melons, with most of the watermelons consumed domestically and the rest exported mainly to Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Supermarket chains are shifting towards smaller watermelons and seedless varieties, which are increasingly popular. Syngenta plans to grow watermelons across 3,300 hectares, marking an almost 20% increase from the previous year, with Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county seeing the largest growth.

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Original content

Watermelon season will start earlier this year, partly due to the good weather and partly due to improvements made by growers, said Imre Csizmadi, president of the Department of Horticulture at the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture. “This year there was nothing extreme in the weather, thus we can expect a very good harvest,” stressed Mátyás Göcző, president of the Hungarian Melon Growers Association, reports Világgazdaság. said Péter Kelemen, executive director of FruitVeB Hungarian Interbranch Organization for Fruits and Vegetables. It is fortunate, however, that fertilizer prices are lower than last year, meaning some relief for producers, but they still have to reckon with rising labor costs: in Békés, for example, these have increased by 20-30% compared to last year. On the other hand, it is positive for domestic production, due to the fact that it also affects Mediterranean countries. For Spanish, Greek, and Italian production, climate change adds a degree of uncertainty, ...

Source: Hungarytoday