With cheaper, local fruits and vegetables available on the market, trade is often slower this time of year for Russian importers.
"It is normal that consumption drops for imported products during July and August, in what we consider to be 'deep summer'. Consumers are only really interested in local fruits and vegetables like tomatoes and watermelons, along with various stone and soft fruits." shared importer Andrey Volkov from Tropic Fruit.
Vegetables like local Russian open field tomatoes are especially popular with consumers, both because consumers have the feeling that they are more 'natural' than the greenhouse tomatoes (which Andrey urges, is not really true), but also because they are 2 to 3 times cheaper than their greenhouse counterparts.
"The local open field tomatoes are so popular, that some small local traders in kiosks even mark foreign tomatoes as Russian grown to sell them better. Many believe that the uglier the tomato the better, with some even marking them as bio, which is not the case.The only people doing this are the local growers, who I don't believe really know what Bio entails." continued Andrey.
"There was a report on Russia television last Friday about small Chinese greenhouses being set up, under the radar, near major cities. The growers have 'babuschkas" (older women) at Metro stations selling tomatoes and other produce such as mushrooms and berries, which consumers think is from their own personal garden, thus more natural, but have actually been grown in unsupervised greenhouses where no one knows whether or not they are safe, because it has been indicated that many of these growers are most likely using illegal pesticides and other illegal treatments to speed growth." said Andrey.
"Of course, supermarkets, especially exclusive ones, do still sell small quantities of imported tomatoes in order to offer alternative varieties or types which are not offered in the local market. However, this is mostly for the top 1-2%, where the supermarkets only receive around 1 box of each variety or type, per supermarket, per week. It is more about them having a broad selection than based on customer demand."
