Well, it’s already mid-October, when most of the harvest has already been harvested, there are still some crops left, such as buckwheat. Of course, the harvesting stage has barely ended, but what are the first conclusions of the farmers? The harvest is generally good, despite the experienced frosts, floods, drought?
If we compare 2023 and 2024, the general conclusion is that 2023 was bad for everyone, 2024 is very peculiar, very, very different. Even for farms located relatively close to each other (a few kilometers, not to mention a few dozen kilometers apart), the situation can be completely different. Therefore, it is quite difficult to give an overall assessment, because every thing we would say in general terms – it will be worse for someone, and better for someone. However, if we talk about such overall average yields, then it must be said that absolutely all crops have a better yield this year than the previous year. We wouldn’t call it a good harvest, but it’s better than last year. To be objective, it is very bad in some places, but in some places there is a good harvest – both in grain growing, fruit growing, and in the vegetable sector. This is what characterizes this year’s results most accurately – very, very sharp differences even between farms.
Above all, we must talk about the quality of the harvest, where we were not very lucky this year. There are several reasons for this. One of them is the drought experienced in summer. As much as people love dry and warm weather, crop production, horticulture and other fields of agriculture have experienced problems due to drought. On the other hand, in autumn, we were affected by the rains, which were mostly in the Zemgale region – the heavy wetness, which most significantly affected potatoes, onions and garlic in horticulture. Even if their harvest was good in terms of volume, the quality is quite bad – in some places even half of the potato harvest will be rotten. It is the same with onions, which, of course, customers also notice – buy onions from local producers in a store, take them home and conclude that they have started to spoil inside, although they look good on the outside. This again brings with it a series of other problems – yields are lower somewhere, quality is lower elsewhere, at the same time, it is necessary to ensure a certain temperature and other regimes for the storage of the harvest, which, of course, also requires the consumption of electricity, which means additional costs, due to which the final product in the store becomes more expensive in the long term. .
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