Apple growers: best harvest in five years

This year's apple harvest is the best in five years, say apple growers. What's more, Polish orchardists have had a less good year, so Lithuanian apples will be available for sale in the neighbouring country. 

„It's going to be a good year for orchardists this year (...) This is the first year after the frost of 2019, and it's usually been this, that, the other, and the other ... Now we can't count yet, but it seems that there are apples, but they have not yet been picked," Vitalija Kuliešienė, head of the Lithuanian Association of Business Gardens „Vaisiai ir uogos“, told BNS.

„This year's harvest is really good, we had a bit of a drought here, but there was no frost when the apple trees were flowering. (...) The conditions were favourable (BNS) and apple trees are less afraid of drought than other crops," Juozas Ravinis, head of the Association of Lithuanian Garden Communities, told BNS. 

V. Kuliešienė said that gardeners will not ask for government support or subsidies because "if everything is good, we say that everything is good".

However, according to the heads of both associations, apple prices will not fall this year due to the good harvest, as workers' salaries and costs are rising, and there is a shortage of apple trees in Poland, which is why the cheapest apples will be sold there.

„Polish portals are buzzing that around a million tonnes of apples will be missing. Frosts, heavy rains, all sorts of showers and there won't be a million tonnes, but they are picking 4–5 million, so they won't be much affected by the million, but we are affected because the price of apples is more normal in the UK, –, explained V. Kuliešienė.

„It's not the apples themselves that are the most expensive thing, it's the preserving, the arrival, the storage“, – added J. Ravinis. 

He also stressed that the price of apples is never high in Lithuania, as many people grow their own apples and share them. 

„When people start sharing apples, there are fewer people buying them, and if more people want to juice them, it changes again, but the purchase price is never very high in Lithuania. (...) Now people just keep that price – one euro – in the market and that's it, – said Mr Ravinis.