mal years, Sicilian carrots are popular abroad between April and late June, but things didn't go that way this year," says Massimo Pavan, deputy chairman of the PGI Ispica New carrot consortium and sales manager for Pef srl."Because winter was rather warm all over Europe, carrots were still available in countries like Denmark and Holland when we were ready to export." This in turn meant that Sicilian carrot exports dropped by 30%.
This absence of foreign outlets was met by a difficult situation on the domestic market too, as consumption was affected by the economic crisis and by the fact that productive areas in Lazio and Veneto ended their campaign later than usual, so we only had 30 days to place our produce.
"Production was in the norm, things would have been worse had we overproduced." Still, 20% of carrots will remain unharvested, as harvesting them now would be useless." Just think that the price of carrots from Chioggia is only €0.10/kg and it costs €0.07 to transport carrots to Northern Italy!"
The situation is affecting the entire carrot sector as "for example, 80% Chioggia carrots are destined abroad but, if Germany harvests early, which it probably will, it will be impossible to sell them. Despite this, over there they usually harvest carrots anyway, even if they sell at €0.03/kg, to avoid leaving roots in the ground."
Although it's too early to make an assessment, Massimo Pavan feels that there will be a reduction of the cultivated surfaces next year. "It is not cheap to grow carrots and it has been very difficult to get loans in the last few years."
The only positive news comes from the PGI produce. "Thanks to the promotional activities we activated after we obtained the PGI mark at the beginning of 2013, we doubled the volumes and conquered a share of the market both in Italy and abroad. In this phase we decided not to sell them at a different price tho
